The girl with the long, dark hair bows her head in prayer as the ghostman’s call to arms wafts across our breaking
Passover bread, the belief that all promises are binding
Will keep us, will keep us
Bound to the hands of beauty
The sun inhales deep, swims down, down to us through a drowned world of trees, still our guardian angels, bright fish dart among them, impersonating song birds, the children are not safe here anymore
As ordinary men huddle and cast lots
for the seamless robe of
God
Survivors get to decide what they do with their story.
My daughter reminds me of this when I complain about a particular rape narrator who seems to be exonerating people who actively refused to value her need to be heard over points in a game.
What I would tell if she answered my email is:
…but they are, and as long as they are, your message is not enough, whether it is what you say or don’t say to a group of athletes, or what you tell the mother of a rape victim
By not answering her at all.
We ask liturgical questions, why must the dead pretend they are anything else, here in the depths of the world where we have waited so long? We resemble our former selves, only shadows now, constructing chalk outlines of the world which has gone on without us
When he breaks through we watch in awe, chalk outlined arms raised, like children who must be helped into
The clothing of this beautiful
Hereafter
He has found a little stream, dips his feet into the water away from all the others. When I ask him about all he has lost, he shrugs as if to say
Lost wife
Lost country
Lost king
Lost friends
But he has new friends now, even among the children and grandchildren and great grandchildren of his erstwhile wife.
He recites these my-life-for-yours words as if the man who wrote them had written them for him…
….He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him. [18] The lot causeth contentions to cease, and parteth between the mighty. [19] A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle. [20] A man’s belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth; and with the increase of his lips shall he be filled. [21] Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. [22] Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing , and obtaineth favour of the Lord . [23] The poor useth intreaties; but the rich answereth roughly. 24] A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly:
…there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
Let us wait here, darling
Until he comes.
Was it a crime for the man in the silver truck to exit his vehicle to drag the wounded doe to the median?
Then leave her there.
Was it a crime to drive past her
her immobility
As she lifted her head
in pain and wonder
At all of us, terrible Samaritans
Leaving her to die alone.
Strange how we can take words and reduce them to
shadows of their former selves
Willfully diminishing
What casts a shadow
and the utter strength of light
Days before the Passover lamb, John the Baptist mends her long robe, pours oil over wounds with words which make sense only to the dead, faith the fire we warm our hands by,
Let me in, let me in says the moon and the wind, let me in to the stillness of everlasting, as even now the children begin to
Lay down their outer garments, their palm branches, as we all sing, hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
We are close now, so close .
Your love
is like
the mints I fish from the bottom of
my purse
Inside the camera frame men laugh about bartering girls as sex slaves.
Where are these men now?
Where are their victims?
Is there a Mendelian trait for “monster?”
It is easy to focus on the unfamiliarity of words
They use
For the blue or green eyes
of their victim
But locker rooms are locker rooms
everywhere because
the god of lust and violence has so many
F*cking clothes in his f*cking closet
Carrying Light 