Work Text:
i. the first commandment is salt
in the beginning, there was wind and the boy who called it god.
bodhi said: “you ever listen to the sea when no one else is?”
and johnny, raised on dry grass and football blood,
did not know how to speak in tides.
but he nodded anyway.
because that was the first lie of love.
to agree.
to say, yes, i hear it.
(i don’t, not yet.)
bodhi moves like driftwood that remembers how to dance.
he arrives, wet and baptized in his own gospel.
he tells stories like riddles, and the answers are always:
run.
leap.
touch god on the curl of a wave and don’t ask what happens after.
johnny listens,
because he wants to know what it feels like
to be moved by something you can’t catch.
ii. ritual of the board and blood
the sea is a knife with rhythm.
bodhi straps fiberglass to his feet and calls it freedom.
johnny wipes out six times before he learns what worship feels like.
they teach you in church to kneel.
they teach you in the ocean to fall, and fall again,
and be grateful that it lets you back in.
bodhi says: “you got it now. it’s in your blood.”
johnny doesn’t answer.
he’s still bleeding.
he doesn’t know if it’s seawater or something softer.
salt in the mouth. sunburn on the soul.
the thing is—
johnny’s a lawman. a man of order.
he doesn’t know how to want something he’s not supposed to arrest.
but bodhi smiles like he’s already seen the end.
like he knows.
like johnny is just another tide that will come when called.
iii. beatitudes for the doomed
blessed are the thrill-seekers,
for they shall inherit the void.
blessed are the liars who kiss like saints.
blessed are the handcuffs you never put on.
blessed are the boys who run toward fire and call it flight.
they sleep curled like quotation marks,
as if they’re still in dialogue.
johnny breathes in the smell of wax and gunpowder,
and thinks of all the ways a man can drown
without even touching water.
bodhi talks in dreams.
he says, “death isn’t the end, it’s just a bigger wave.”
johnny flinches every time.
not because he disagrees,
but because he’s starting to believe it too.
iv. gospel of velocity
speed is a form of prayer.
falling is just flying with bad intentions.
johnny jumps out of the plane with no parachute
and thinks:
is this what love is?
believing he’ll catch you
even as he’s the reason you fell.
they are closer in freefall than they ever were in bed.
every scream is a psalm.
every plummet a confession.
gravity doesn’t care who you love.
but it will strip you bare all the same.
and maybe that’s why johnny never flinched.
maybe he wanted to be unmade by someone who meant it.
v. the temptation in the desert
they sit in silence before the last storm.
bodhi fingers the edge of the map like it’s a love letter.
johnny holds the badge like it’s a wound.
there’s a kind of hunger in both of them.
one for justice.
one for god.
one for the shape of a man’s spine at dawn
and the way his voice breaks when he says don’t go.
but bodhi was never meant to stay.
he’s the part of the story that burns out before the end.
he’s the martyr who never asked for sainthood.
johnny watches him walk toward the ocean,
and thinks:
what’s holier than letting the thing you love destroy itself?
he throws the badge like a bone into the sea.
it doesn’t matter anymore.
nothing does—
except the sound of the waves
carving a name that isn’t his
into the mouth of the world.
vi. epistle of the undertow
this is how it ends.
or begins.
with a storm.
with a boy who refused to run.
johnny lets him go.
not out of mercy—
but because bodhi never belonged anywhere
that didn’t move.
what is love, if not a shoreline?
you come back to it, over and over,
and it recedes.
you build sandcastles
and watch the tide take them.
and still you build.
johnny walks the beach alone now.
but every time the wave crashes,
he listens for a voice beneath the roar.
and sometimes—
he hears it.
bodhi, saying:
you were the only one who saw me.
you were the only one who stayed.
vii. doxology for the unsaved
glory to the fallen boys who wanted flight.
glory to the ones who touched fire and called it brother.
glory to the kiss you never spoke aloud.
glory to the surfboard like a sacrificial blade.
glory to the badge in the sand.
glory to the man who left.
glory to the man who stayed.
this is not a happy ending.
this is not a warning.
this is a hymn.
a howl.
a hallelujah.
johnny utah walks the beach like a pilgrim.
a penitent.
a man who once held a god in his arms and let him go.
and if love is a crime—
he confesses.
again.
again.
again.
viii. amen
and if god is real,
he lives in the break of the wave
and the breath between heartbeats.
he wears a wetsuit and sun-bleached hair.
he laughs like thunder.
he fucks like forgiveness.
he runs like sin.
johnny kneels at the edge of the water
and whispers,
i loved you.
and that was enough.
amen.