Close to Divine
content warning: substance abuse
Monday
The woman on the line is explaining how to call Angels, not like on the phone, but how to manifest one, right where you are, right now. I am trying to remember this woman’s name, because I know her, and pretty well too. I close my eyes and visualize her face, a long sharp nose with red and bluey veins that protrude beneath the thin skin of her temples. Like what kind of Angels, I ask her. Like BIBLICAL, she says.
Tuesday
I will stay in bed today. My arms and legs are too heavy to move; my fingers feel like pylons. I don’t want to be this way. I try visualizing an Angel. One that is outside my apartment door, trying the handle, thick white wings cascading to their ankles. I didn’t lock the door. They are in my living room now, their brow slightly furrowed as they rub a leaf on my dying fig tree. You can’t grow that in here, but they won’t say that out loud for fear of hurting my feelings. They step on a pair of dirty underwear, the sticky crotch adhering to the bottom of their beautiful foot. Please leave, I shout out loud, my face hot with shame.
Wednesday
Spiritual TikTok is saying we’ve shifted realities, the woman on the phone tells me. I think her name is Margaret. We met at an AA meeting last year. She had on a pair of green stiletto shoes and red silky pants, and I remember thinking she looked festive, but hot. I ask her if she remembers meeting me, and she is silent for a moment. You told a personal story that made me uncomfortable, she says. I tell her about summoning my Angel, and I hear her breathe in deep through her nose. Be on the lookout for 7’s, she says. Don’t be afraid of major shifts. I listen to her talk about Angel Numbers. I think about her silky red pants, and how I watched her green stiletto bounce back and forth as I told my AA group about the time I went to a bar by myself and got so fucked up on cranberry vodkas and snorted so many miniature piles of coke off my housekey that I had to take a shit. The bathroom door was unlocked, and there was a man leaned back against the sink, his dick out, and a woman was crouched in front of him, trying to suck it. The man looked at me, like fully at me, and waved me inside. I sat on the toilet and took a shit while the woman took his dick in wet, slurpy mouthfuls. I remember thinking she wasn’t very good at it. I remember the walls were a dark chalkboard and someone had scrawled in white chalk, DUMP HIM! and the man’s head moved back and forth beneath the words.
Thursday
I think I could really get into this Angel thing. When I tell Margaret I don’t believe in God, she says that’s okay because God believes in me. It’s not really even about belief, she says. It’s about visualization. Okay, I say. Okay, I’m really going to try this. And we both laugh, because we can manifest Angels, we can make that happen.
Friday
Today I am not going to eat at all. Fasting is an inherently Holy Thing, and by lunch time I feel scant, nearly ethereal. I am nervous about meeting my Angel, and I spend time cleaning my apartment and watering my fig tree. By dinner time, my head feels big and shiny, so I get into bed and close my eyes. I see my Angel on the subway, people crowding around them. They are close now, and I hear the slight husking sound of their wings brushing up the stairs. I left the door open, and they pause in the hallway, give a polite cough to let me know they’ve arrived. They watch where they step this time, and I see them now, standing by my bed. Hello, I want to say. They cup my chin with their hand, and their skin feels heavy and dry. I watch as the Angel moves around my room, their form casting long, wavy shadows. They pick up my jewelry box that is full of condoms and thumb through The Collected Poems of Jim Dine. I say, I don’t get it either, but they ignore me.
Saturday
I want my Angel to like me, but Margaret says that’s not what it’s about. It’s about man-i-fest-ing. We are all divine beings, she says. I think about the time I performed a striptease for a group of my father’s business associates. It was a party my parents threw for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and there was a full bar. My mother pulled me down from atop a glass table, one breast bouncing from my blouse, a group of men stumbling back with their ties at angles, and their eyes full and wet. What’s the difference between manifesting and hallucinating, I ask Margaret.
Sunday
I sit in the park, planting my palms on either side of me, the concrete slab beneath me feels cool and rough. Summoning an Angel in public is risky, Margaret says, but I am nervous about being alone with mine. I close my eyes tight: the Angel is getting up from the grassy hill, brushing dirt from their hands. Please touch me, I think, and they are sitting down beside me, and I smell yeast and talcum powder. In this light, their wings are filthy, and I think of pigeons with red little eyes. You’re so close, they whisper. They tuck a piece of hair behind my ear, and I want to shudder, but don’t. I know, I say.
Andrea Harper is an emerging writer and sculptor living in Texas. Her writing has appeared in Columbia Journal, and her short story “Taking on Water” received honorable mention in Glimmer Train's Final Very Short Fiction contest. She is currently at work on her first short story collection.