Liam McCain

How you have fallen from heaven,

O Lucifer, son of the morning!

—Isaiah 14:12

It was the only

way they’d stop.

No one bats an eye

to mar the locker

of a Liam—

penning I’m a faggot

in their boldest Sharpie pink.

But a Lucifer?

It’s funny how it ceased.

Striding through the hall

in midnight black.

Even goths got

out of your way,

no one who’d dare

to look you in the face.

How you hooked your mom

to change your name

isn’t known to this very day.

Some say you cast a spell,

from a pentagram soaked in

ichor; others say by the

devil she was bewitched.

As far as you’re concerned—

the darker is always the better.

But it had nothing to do with

fear. Just the love for a mother’s

son. It’s a much more angelic name

she’d say with a kiss upon your

scalp, adding that it was God

who had reserved it

for his most beautiful Seraphim.

There are some who say

you drink the blood of goats.

It’s just the chalice

of the grape, held up in the air

like First Communion. Or perhaps

the Final Supper. The night that

Judas ceased to be a given name.

Such a winsome, heavenly name.

Andreas Gripp

December 25, 2025

RF Photo