these, our bodies, possessed by light

dictionary poem iii by mica k

Archetype Inspirations - God’s Chosen

palm sunday. you come into the city drunk with sun and laughing, grit under your nails from where you scooped up the palm fronds—it was sukkot again, half a spring later, and when the master finally sat to remove his sandals you draped him in s’chach, as though to say, this is small and fragile dwelling in which I will sleep; let come the harvest.

maundy thursday. it made him god, that surrender. the lies and the kissing never mattered, the sleeping faithful,the knife in peter’s hand—cups and kings and theogony, grief poured out on a rock beneath the olive trees, and all for one centurion, touching the shell of his ear in mute wonder.

good friday. the son of god is a sack of meat, strung up on a windlass and still bleeding—strugglingagainst the fragile cradle of wristbones to draw breath.And still, such a small, pure thing,when he asks for his father, and receives no answer.

tenebrae. hell is the hills of nazareth, but cold; a pale imitation without singing, hard under noontide sun. He finds snakes in the long grass, split end to end as thoughthe sight of that bloody internality might repulse him—but he only gathers them up, and goes on walking toward the sky.

holy saturday. it is night in the upper room, lamps guttering into the blackness—you are confident there are no gods out there (you have killed them) but despite your best effortsyou are every secondalive, alive, alive, in a hard-gnawing waythat refuses to feel solely grief, but remembersthe curve of his smile, his splayed stride. The wayhis stories always ended with a homecoming.