Paul, Least of the Apostles
In the cave beneath the waterfall,
he takes off his shirt and runs
straight into the jets of hard mineral
water funneling down the rock,
all dark except for his shining back
twisted with muscle. He throws water at me
and I scream, droplets spattering
my plastic poncho. This is the same boy
who, across the table at the restaurant,
confided in me the inner workings of miracles.
I divide his life into two parts: before he
was saved, and after. I never knew
what came before, but I can picture that boy
in the one dousing himself in the cave—
the sheer want, and the incapacity
for consequence. How violently
he baptizes himself now,
when hours before I watched him ignore
the cries of bats as he shined his flashlight
across their sleeping bodies, those ugly, naked bodies.
Baylina Pu graduated from Yale in 2023. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Magazine Non Grata, Michigan Quarterly Review Online, New Ohio Review, Black Warrior Review Online, Pine Hills Review, Dirt, and more. She received her MFA from Columbia University, where she was awarded the Felipe De Alba Fellowship, and her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net. She currently teaches at Gotham Writers Workshop and has taught previously for Columbia University, The Center for Fiction, Yale Alumni Association, and Accent Society. You can find her at baylinapu.com.