#jesustalk

the first angels i met were watchkeepers over the house i grew up in. it was a dinky little trailer in a quiet, well-maintained little park populated mostly by retirees and the occasional meth cook. nothing remarkable in itself, but i’m pretty sure our trailer was situated over some sort of spiritual continental divide or a rift in spacetime or something. weird shit always went down there, and i never realized how much weird shit went down till i moved out. my mom (who is also v sensitive to the supernatural) and i used to joke that it was a “halfway house for wayward demons and lost ghosts.”one night, i was going for a walk around the neighborhood, and when i returned to my house i saw two enormous shadowy figures crouched at each end of the trailer: one east, one west. the way they were perched reminded me of the ark of the covenant. they weren’t humanoid, per se, just shapes of dark cobalt and gold that almost disappeared in the night, with giant gold-laced wings outstretched to cover the majority of the house. one carried a spear, and one a staff with a lantern on the end, and they were crossed in the middle. neither acknowledged my presence, and although i glimpsed them out of the corner of my eye and in dreams several times over the years there, neither ever showed any signs of movement. their presence was grave and heavy, but overall comforting because after they took up post on our roof, the nastier demons tended to stay outside and leave us alone for the most part.

then there’s my guardian angel, for lack of a better word. i nicknamed him marlboro, because during the summer i first met him, i kept finding marlboro cigarette butts under my windowsill, which he eventually confessed to leaving there. did he smoke them? eat them? harvest them just to confuse me? i dunno, but for a while i was convinced it was a peeping tom who was really bad at covering their tracks.voyeurism aside, i also mistook him for a demon the first time i met him. at the time, i was still living in the trailer, and was still near constantly plagued with supernatural bullshit. demons tend to flock in threes for strength (imo trying to mimic the holy trinity), and i had a triumvirate in my room wrecking havoc on my mental health. i usually don’t have anxiety, but they were giving me anxiety attacks that felt like i’d been sliced in half with a blade of PURE RAW FEAR. i was chilling in my room one afternoon trying to calm down from one of these anxiety attacks when i thought i saw a shimmering blade out of the corner of my eye, emerging from thin air like an invisible curtain covering it had been briefly blown aside. thinking it was the demon, i whipped out my fuckin holy water and incense and tried to FITE TF OUT OF IT, but it didn’t budge. instead, it started laughing, this beautiful, but incredibly stressful sound like being stuck inside a giant brass bell while it rang.“are you really trying to exorcise me?” a voice asked, and i felt a bit nauseous. “get the fuck out, demon,” i replied. the laughter got louder and the blade burst into flames, sending light dancing around the room. “bro, seriously? i’m your angel,” it said. “here, watch this.” the point of the blade cut into the floor, opening up a little slice of darkness, and the point hooked around some screaming, squirming thing that it pulled up from the floor. i recognized it instantly as the demon that had been fucking with me: this vile thing dripping rotting blood and green bile, parts one two and three being a rusty spike, a moldering cloth wrapping it up, and a ribbon covered in eyes tying the bundle together. clawed hands reached out from behind the curtain shielding me from the brightness of the flaming blade and unwrapped the demon piece by piece, shredding it while it shrieked and blubbered. then the hands lifted the sword, twisted the blade into the demon’s “heart” and cut it in two easy as cutting air.the laughter stopped, and i felt a gentle weight on my knees and shoulders, pushing me to the floor. “you’re welcome,” the laughing voice said. the sword had disappeared behind the curtain again, and i felt a soft presence slip across my eyes before vanishing. i was so overwhelmed and stressed out by the encounter i took a nap on the floor and woke up four hours later.since then, i’ve gotten to know marlboro better and he doesn’t scare me anymore. his is a welcome presence, soft and humorous (if obnoxiously sarcastic for an angel), but still fiercely intense and a little careless with that intensity. i think he forgets my puny human brain can’t fully conceptualize his existence and sometimes he’s so intense it’s almost smothering. for the most part, he keeps his distance unless i call on him. lately, he’s been hovering over my bed while i sleep to guard my dreams, but for the most part he does his own thing elsewhere and doesn’t pay me much attention. i’ve also gotten a more accurate picture of his physical appearance over the years, but i still have trouble articulating. the ‘curtain’ i first saw turned out to be a garment he wears to shield himself from sight, like an invisibility cloak made of dark matter or some shit. if i had to compare his form to anything, it would be a barn owl, but even that doesn’t do him justice at all. i can’t tell if he carries many flaming blades under his cloak, or if those are feathers, or what, but occasionally i’ll catch a glint of sharp things in the soft, heavy, star-laden darkness under the garment. he exudes a dense rust-grey smoke that obscures everything but his face, and i think it’s another layer of protection he offers me, but i’m not sure. it smells like a bizarre blend of incense, rancid meat, and river water.

unlike my wandering truant angel, my mom’s guardian angel never leaves her side. it stands behind her with a vice grip on her left shoulder, and its presence scares the shit out of my cats. she has to ask it to loosen its grip and back off a bit, otherwise her shoulder aches and she can’t sleep with its overbearing weight on her. i haven’t seen much of its physical appearance, and i really don’t want to. it’s enormous, and tbh kinda terrifying. it wears full-body armor, but i only know what its head/shoulders looks like bc it noticed i was watching it and vanished with a sound like a flock of pigeons taking flight. its helmet is a featureless visor of tarnished golden-y color with plates like a snake’s scutes that slope gently into broad, rounded shoulders. tbh it looked a little bit like these fuckers, the druids from voltron. when they first made an appearance i was like “noooooooo fuckinnn wayyyyyy” lmao art imitates life or w/e.