A few years ago I sat down to write. I set out to write a continent-sized lament. The tone was apocalyptic. I didn’t understand at first that it was apocalyptic because I bore an apocalypse within my belly. I was disrupted.

I set out to do one thing and realised I was, in fact, doing the opposite. I was told “daughter of Thunder, gird up now thine loins with sackcloth and make thee a most grievous lament.” I set out to write a continent-sized lament. What I have instead is a lament for humanity.

An elegy for the living: for what is soon to be unleashed upon them.
An elegy for the dying: for their time is short.
An elegy for the dead: for alas! They are no more.

I started writing about water; trade; spirits. In much of my work, waters become blood; waters - rains - dry up, are poisoned, leading to famine; I began unleashing plague after plague without understanding what I was writing. I did so for the simple reason that it is time.

It was a compulsion. The first waters were muddied, filthy, salty. Tears. But that’s what happens when you dig a well and hit the water table. You have to go deeper in order to hit pure water. You have to go Deeper. Higher. Wider.

The torments are coming. I would know.

The worst thing about this year by far has been watching people I love dearly, suffer. I’m used to suffering. I might kick off while going through it but on a deeper level I understand the refiner’s fire. Those fires have made me hardy.

But there are few things as awful as seeing people you love, people you’ve been reared with, in pain. Deep soul hurts. I’ve witnessed loved ones in pain this year, and I don’t even have words of comfort. So let me wallow in ashes with them. It is well.

I’ve been hatching an epoch in my belly. Just as my mother hatched one she did not understand in hers.

Jehovah Nissi, be a banner for your people. Those who don’t yet know you and those who do. Walk with them, even as you have walked with me

And I will grant my two witnesses power to prophesy for one thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands which stand before the Lord of the earth.

They have power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to smite the earth with every plague, as often as they desire.