leviticus

written by Aries, in honor of the movie.

Jul 05, 2026

graphic made by @emmmileo

sometimes you’re back in the church again, your body being prodded by the same hands that preached about love, and no one ever asks what omnipotence looks like when it has fingernails, when every finger is crooked, pressing into your belly and something alive might pucker if they push hard enough, and your stomach lurches with the boy you want to kiss, the girl you want tattooed across your back, the person you’d breathe cigarette smoke back into, like mouth-to-mouth communion, and the town watches, hawkeyed, they smell your sweat before you do, you can feel God nesting behind their eyes, and one day your mother tells you there’s a sickness in town, and she won’t look at you when she says you’re afflicted, someone has to bury it, and by supper she has already decided, and you sit there in stone silence watching the priest preach about love, but what is love if it doesn’t guarantee all and makes an exemption for privilege, and they gather around you with their hands, they know how to bless things before they kill them, praying over your body, they’re waiting again for that insectile need inside of you to crawl out, wanting to sanctify its thorax, pin its wings, bury it, and what is that something but the unbearable fullness of loving, of spurring your entire body to its entire span to protect someone, and that night the goats won’t stop bleating, something scratches beneath the floorboards, your mother cries in the next room, mourning has arrived before death, and you pray for a God to save you, but the only thing waiting for you is the person you love, and even they have become a monster because everyone keeps saying monsters always look like love, and where do you run when every doorway opens into another church, when every shadow reaches out with your mother’s voice, when your own body begins to feel borrowed, and one day you’re still in that small town, flies filling your mouth, your body swollen beneath the heat, the whole town waiting for you to heal, and still, beneath all the rot, you are still loving the monster, and this is leviticus, and it is surely not the end.

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