Creation Story, From the Tongue Outward

In the beginning, there was salt. It hung in the air like unfinished scripture, gathered in the throat of the sea, waited for a mouth dumb enough to mistake thirst for an invitation. Then butter, smeared on the void like gossip, greased the dark’s knuckles like an understudy, taught the abyss to melt. The first sound was not speech— it was a swallow, a hush, a crack of cartilage between molars. We spoke in reductions. Grammar dripped from the bones. On the second day, teeth— tiny altars lined with nerve— ground memory into ashable pulp. Pomegranates burst like promises. Figs cloaked their apples in lace. By the third, we named what softened. We named what burned. Built ziggurats from rind to rind. Wrote psalms in onion skin. The fourth hung hunger in the firmament— a constellation shaped like mouths mid-ask. On the fifth, we forgot the recipe and mourned it like a god. By the sixth, we’d tongued every fruit that offered a rumor of sugar. We learned: the mouth is a beast with no leash and excellent taste. And on the seventh, we lay full and feral, belly to sky, licking the holy oil from our fingers.