Picture yourself atop a tree crested mountain

Leaves flipping faster than racecars

Whipping round and singing with the breeze they ride

and the birds you spy and watch

as they leer back at you in jealousy,

for you take in the landscape they know is theirs

 

You whip out a stark contrast to the scenery around you

a thousand screws and electric currents wrapped

in one ruinous rectangle called phone,

Capable of encapsulating miles on miles of

beautiful evergreen tipped and burnt with the orange

of God’s paintbrush and the sun’s tip of his hat

 

But the picture you take has the flat of your face

which blocks and pushes half the scape

making the birds mock, laugh, jeer you,

the rocks tremble and cringe,

and God feel petty with his paintbrush

having been robbed his brilliant palette of tigerprint forest

 

A photo with a filter is worth less than a sentence

in fact, to most, it’s only worth a doubletap, a like

If that picture was ever transformed

into a thousand words

the said filter would be excess punctuation,

shredded cheese on chicken parm

 

A hashtag would be a flashback

in a story about the past and likes:

applause in an art studio, a cacophonous upheaval

of value and worth. Narcissus never asked Echo to

double tap his reflection and Echo only asked to

see that picture perfect being in person

 

So I hold my Echo’s hand while we walk

through caverns and no cacophony comes

close to the shouts that teeter between us

I show God my envy for his ability by

admiring every sunset with entranced glare and

never need photos because they’ll always return

 

So if God is so great with that glorious brush

why is new color etched on the sky day in and out?

If he makes no mistakes, I was not made by God

Not merely molded to be thrown toward earth like a yoyo

only to be yanked back at death by the flick of a wrist

I need no eternity, or other farce of time

 

And if so, I hope the string snapped-

hope the dissonant sound repeats in His ear

and Echos ever still because that little

crater I must have left is who I am

one small blemish on a giant green and blue ground

where God “walks the dog” and no one

can filter out all the Echos coming from this hole in the ground