the gods are only human by Sky Davis

the sky doesn’t open anymore. no burning bushes,

no stone tablets. just the blue glow of my phone,

17 missed calls from my mother.

she says i never listen. she’s not wrong.

(what is a god if not the first voice you disobey?)

the man on the news says the water is rising.

the city floods like an open mouth & they call it

an act of god.

(what is a god if not the thing we blame

when the ground comes loose?)

my mother says i should pray more. she leaves voicemails

that sound like hymns. call me back, she chants,

call me back. i pocket her voice & forget.

the only altar i kneel at is my kitchen sink,

hands scrubbing a plate that never comes clean.

the cracks in the ceramic remind me of her hands,

veins raised like fault lines.

(god is the body we inherit)

i tell myself stories. how the gods used to be here.

how they lived like we do—

burnt their tongues on coffee, lost their keys.

how maybe they wept into steering wheels

or cursed at cracked phone screens.

how maybe they, too, left the stove on.

my grandmother lights incense & says to bow.

i fold my body into shapes i don’t understand.

i press my forehead to the floor & do not ask why.

outside, the world burns. i do not ask why.

(i have never heard a word from any god that was not human-made.)

the news keeps playing. another act of god.

another city, another surge, another ache.

the camera pans to a woman wading waist-deep,

clutching a child. she looks up,

but the sky is empty.

the gods aren’t watching.

the gods are here, beneath the water.

their hands in the mud. their lungs full of salt.

& maybe, tonight, when i dream,

i’ll see them—

drenched & trembling,

knocking at my door.