Still in this moment

---

Joshua Bennett

A voice says splash.
A child dies in fire.
A man screams to the sky.
A mission is completed.
I am still in this moment.

Every knife comes now with an invitation.
It’s not enough to grip them anymore.
I touch, against my trembling, oak and steel,
deep metal chill against damp and rigid skin.
But I deny the promise and put the knife down.

For now, I think of tears against the wrong coordinates,
parts of people, mechanical now, pulled from
memories as numbing as a moment of choice.
I sit with them as surely as I sit with my son,
his eyes reflecting God’s promise that I will burn.

While I challenge the thing called sleep—
especially when it demands such a price,
called dreams, those horrible horrid things,
and nightmares stilled by
burning images into my heart.

I thought I knew what justice was,
that I would choose the hard path,
even if collared in thorns and hardships,
even if layered in filth and disguised as failure,
even against the weight of the world.

But now every knife is held trembling,
trembling like the voice of a man who knew he was dying,
while sleep drives pain that sounds of the vengeance of angels,
questioning if I ever knew what justice was.
I am still in this moment.