Gillian stood in our cold room, naked and ebullient.  For the first time she appeared to me completely as a woman, a mortal vessel, as old, magical and ancestral as the earth itself. Stark in her fertility, untouchable in her transcendence.  It was in this way she carried our child for nine months.  We both knew she was deeply changed but never spoke of it.  She was beyond me now.  She and God shared a secret while I took the bus every day, sentenced to search the ends of the earth for something to bring back to her.  But what did she want?  She was divine and lit internally by a grace that perpetually pushed me backwards into dark places.  It was on this day, with her standing in the corner of our little cold room, that I took her by the hand and asked her to marry me.  For some strange reason she said yes.  I still don’t know why.

(photo source)

(Young Galaxy’s Shapeshifting LP out on Paper Bag Records)