There’ll be time for dying when we’re dead.
Time for bathing in our sorrow.
Time for pity when the sun’s done down.
Time for grief tomorrow.

There’ll be time for fighting when we’re older.
Time for hate without restraint.
Time for killing if it’s needed.
Time for hell’s foul brush to paint.

But for now, I hold you in the morning.
For now, I gaze upon your face.
For now, your cries bring joy upon me.
For now, I bathe within your grace.

There’ll be time for dying when we’re dead.
Time for all our worlds to end.
But child, oh child, I beg you,
This time, dear God, extend.

One day my friend and I debated how much it cost to run Heaven, versus Hell. My instinct was Hell, with its brimstone furnaces, and complex descending circles of punishment, was clearly more expensive to maintain.

“Not so,” he argued. “We’ve seen proof that Heaven is Hotter than hell, so the heating bill of paradise is higher.  As for other costs, those hosts of angels are singing for their supper. They don’t come for free.”

“Hah,” I proclaimed! “If we include labor, given the amount of  evil in the world, Hell must be orders of magnitude more populous than Heaven. In manpower costs alone, the wage burden must be overwhelming.”

“You misunderstand,” he said. “The wages of sin are virtually nothing.
Hell is populated purely by volunteers.”

Balance is hard; Balancing is easy.

Furious fire, erupting forth,
He is lava.
Gnarling, whorling, devouring
Relentlessly reaching for her.

Calm, deep,
She is sea.
In her patient caresses,
Shaping, smoothing, succoring.

When they touch,
As she smothers his furnace,
In the steam and pain,
A new land is born.

They said she did not need him,
Was better than him,
Was debasing herself.

That she was pure,
A shining light,
Brightness incarnate.

That he was her shadow,
A blemish,
A blot.

Still she shone on, afraid,
For without his shade,
Was she even there?

In the years after he left
(To darken another’s flame)
Her aura cast his outline upon the world.