Swords, when we were young.
Every unconscious stab
Every conscious thrust
They've all left their scars.
In that you had expectations, and I was a tablet of soft clay
I received all your inscriptions
I carried the weight of your accounting
As my own flesh.
You had your script
But I was something else
All your own painful life and troubled sleep
Threw you a soul to confound!
The harder I tried to be recognized
The more you looked away
Until you didn't recognize me at all.
All these pins and thorns, like swords.
They make it so hard to move.
"Release it! Let it go!"
Bad advice.
Those rapiers must be withdrawn.
Some I can reach, many I cannot.
It hurts to move.
Eventually I face my crucifixion.
You don't release that.
You must be taken down, dead.
And forgiveness.
If I follow the pattern,
Before I die, I forgive
Because even if they think they do,
They don't know what they're doing.
Forgiveness is possible
In the great shadow of the cross, only.
It is no light or casual effort to forgive.
And then, passion of the cross. I thirst.
Dying, thousands of times.
Each death, though, withdraws a pin.
Death, though we fear it so, is mercy
And the end of the sin.
After, washing in consecrated water
A holy drop on each pinhole in the flesh.
Are you dead? In faith, yes, you know it.
Next, salve of wine and oil,
Herbs, and spice and linen wrapping.
Rest.
Power.
Finally, when you rise
You take the cup of water turned to wine, become blood
And eat the broken bread become body
And you, you recognize yourself
In the one who went before.
