The Three Days

Jerusalem, on the day of the Crucifixion.

The stone is smooth. The light has no direction. The market sounds like a market, but the argument between the grain-sellers has stopped.

A woman who has lived in this city for eleven years notices the world losing something she has no language for — something in the stone beneath her feet, in the way water used to find its own path.

Above the city, a line of angels holds the last rough ground.

They are losing.

Not to force — to kindness.

Lucifer is not conquering the world. He is improving it.

Children who should have died are alive. The flood will not come. The fever is gone. And with every suffering removed, something else is disappearing too.

The resurrection will not fail.

It will simply become unnecessary.

For readers of Piranesi, Annihilation, and The Road.