Antlers

He did not stand above them.

He moved within them
through the undergrowth,
unseen except in small disturbances -
a branch parted without wind,
a pressure moving through silence.

He knew the paths before they closed.

Not unseen to him.
Only not spoken.

God, but not named.
God, but not held.

He kept close with his creation
where life learned to thicken-
where deer moved carefully
through accumulating growth.

They were what he stayed for.

Bone rising from skull
past the need to defend,
past the need to display-
antlers lifting into excess,
into beautiful burden,
and terrible structures.

They did not stop.

He saw where it went.
He let it go anyway.

Crown widening,
branching into thicket,
until each skull carried
a small forest
that did not belong to the bodies
beneath their necks.

And when they fell-they did not empty.

Antlers struck earth
and refused stillness.
From fracture,
from marrow,
from the quiet architecture
of excess and growth.

To meet the quiet architecture
of death,as if death were
only an unopened direction.

The gardens closed over themselves.

Not for memory, or decay-
but immediate unfolding
forcing upward
through violence and ruptures
as if death were only
another form of branching.

And so the gardens deepened.

Sometimes he watched
when he could have spoken.

Sometimes he walked among them
with care that resembled distance,
with distance that resembled control.

He called it restraint.
It was easier than honesty.

And still-

he changed.

Not in thought-

but in form.

Something in him
answered the pattern.

Bone pressed outward
from his own skull,
slow at first,
then without hesitation.

Antlers-

not as crown,
but as admission.

He entered his creation
not as maker,
but as continuity.

He was no longer outside it,
and so could no longer correct it.

And so he stopped looking at it directly.

Not the moment-
only its final approach,
dissolved inside the same branching
he had allowed to grow
past the point where it could be held.

By then, there was no distance left
from which to choose differently.

By then, it no longer needed him to continue-

Only his silence.

The crown deer pushed forward
without sound.

Its antlers no longer lifting-
but reaching toward him,

and through him-

A single motion
without hesitation.

Bone entered soft flesh.
With no resistance-

Only opening.

And then-

Inversion.

Growth turned inward.

What had risen from earth
now forced itself through him-
through organ,through structure,
through the last remaining boundary
between form and creation

He came apart
not as ruin,but as release.

And he was replaced
faster than breaking could occur.

When it was finished,
there was no god.

Only ground
made dense with
the effects of aftermath.

Only antlers
no longer distinguishable
from root.

Only the gardens,
continuing without witness,
without origin,
without need.

So below-
if below still exists-
something small remained

not as presence,
but as pressure

buried beneath endless growth
unable to end.