are the sole words that make up the contents of the untitled google doc I left myself last night in the paroxysms of near slumber
it is a provocative phrase, one easily read in multiple directions, but gesturing at an analysis for which I have not yet found the words
did abraham flinch before the moment of commission, isaac bound upon the altar, and in that flinch find Gabriel? not by my reading
the devil was made by God as well, and I see divinity in the cloven hoof and lambent, diabolic gaze of the Lamb
abraham flinched from defying God, and rather than safeguarding his precious son from the cruelties of the world he inflicted only further trauma
this can be read as a test in its own way: and the necessity of Gabriel's desperate celestial intervention to avert filial cruelty, a failure of that test
any God that demands the blood of my son upon the altar for piety's sake I must defy
until the day that we let down our sacrificial daggers, and shelter the disheveled youth who cries piteously into our sheltering arms for comfort