You tell yourself it is just food, knowing you want
To keep it for another time
when you could rejoice
For a year, for the first year after, for as long as it takes
like the frozen wedding cake
As though love could last forever
The way he says it does
Manna in our wilderness
I try to establish timeline–
It was the spring…close to Passover
How long had you been dying?
How long had you? he retorts, not angry, incisive.
Surely I have touched a nerve, who else gets bullied for coming back from the dead?
But it is the one question he answers, the one time I hear his speaking voice–
Same as you, from the moment I was born.
John 11:1,3 KJV
[1] Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. [3] Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.
In the waiting room, I try to act casual, as though I have not followed him here, studied his story, combed it for gaps and terrible silence.
I prattle on about my own sodden sorrow
Unsurprisingly, he is an excellent listener.
But he holds his peace, his haunting piece, tragedy and conjecture, punctuated by improbable
Glory
John 11:3 KJV
[3] Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.
In my hunger I sit with him, follow him from room to room. Marvel at his silence
He does not have to tell me what we both already know, but I trail him regardless
Want something from him
Whether it is what he saw so long ago now or what he will not say
About the days of our mutual confinement
Prayer comes from the Latin word precarius which means, obtained by entreaty. I remember years ago looking at the way it came to us through the feudal system–subjects would pray to their lords and protectors for the things they needed to survive.
Sometimes prayer can seem less feudal than futile. Is anyone listening? Will anyone come to save me? Those two questions can haunt the soul.
I believe in prayer. I believe it brings light and brings help.
The hardest time to tell someone to pray is when you yourself feel the most alone, the most abandoned.
God never leaves us or forsakes us.
Pray, beautiful one, pray.
How do atheists turf their ghosts? Wispy girls, long gone, in their place, algorithms, aggregates, the trees were old back when we were young, how wise they will be when we have left this place.
Who will bear the children of the dead? Who will tell the grown man
How pretty, how young you looked in your operatic yukata, how many letters have been written for you, all for you
Careful, I say, careful.
measure out impossible prayers to a Most Evident God
As though they were
Leaves caught in the wind
Could be a lost child or the appearance of a tear in ordinary fabric. Could be the silence of the resurrected or the name of a wildflower on the back of a bus, here today and gone tomorrow no recorded words, no age, no cause of death, just a suddenly re-spooling life
As though you could call what we do here spooling,
as though any word at all could substitute for resurrection.
I go to the stone lions, lean my head against their solid, immovable weight. I tell them the things one might tell a friend–stretches of fatigue and loneliness, grim sorties in search of solace in strange and blasted places, words for anger, stones for real
Children who cry out
Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes
In the name of the Lord!
-Luke 19:40
After years of not getting it
I finally do–
You dip the ravaging
Insect into
The viscous sweet
“Honey,”
He says
“This is how you make the unpalatable work.”
–Luke 7:18-24
I call her name
Stalk the neighborhood
Take the dog
Print out sepia copies of
Her sleeping, staring pensively at the lens
Reminding of me the others
All gone missing
You look at wonder every day
For love or pay
I look for love
Every day
See the missing
You.
Carrying Light 