huge black looming walls line the path to an unknown destination of darkness. those on the path are cloaked in black, mourning the loss of earthly lives. they march on so close together that it remains almost impossible to distinguish bodies from one another. all faces pointed to the seemingly inevitable destination. starkly, separately, stands the soldier. his face following the footsteps of his prisoners. only one soldier necessary to commit such acts, to facilitate such pain. his body as stiff as a starched white collared shirt rules over the hunched, crumpled mob. a gun slung over his left shoulder, he dictates the blurred movement. his right arm stretches out reaching his final victim—the only white figure—dragging him to this ultimate doom. a pair of haunting black-smudged eyes boar into you, deeper than any spear or bullet could go. for these eyes speak knowingly of his fate: suffering. his body is ripped off thecross where all mankind proudly displayed him. the nails remain jutting out from those forcibly hammered in holes. but the soldier faces forward, Jesus too must come and die once again.
(inspired by Moshe Hoffman’s Six Million and One)
madly madly i feel for you.
if only my lips could produce such verse and sonnet, but woe, i lack the precise and eloquent vocabulary that you so nobly grasp.
oh how i long to be the lashes upon your eyelids that i might catch a glimpse of how you look out upon this green evanescence.
you sir, without any realization or blink, have captured it all—the air, the depth, the vastness.
be so kind as to bestow a word upon my porcelain fingertip so that i may gingerly press it to my feeble lip.
madly madly i am in a daze.
swirled into the rush, i have yet to notice.
come, ever so gently, and trace the unformed wrinkles that lie dormant.
madly madly i fell for you.
let your eyes see beyond the dirt coating worn hands, rough feet, and unfashionable clothes to avoid initial incorrect judgments.
let your ears listen patiently past the slopping mud, foreign tongues, and stark silence to hear the muffled cries and tear down your unfaltering walls.
let your hands reach out and touch with gentle strength the unclean, discarded, and abandoned knowing this is your greatest calling.
and let your heart embrace with utmost fullness those who are pushed to the sidelines of this life, to follow a sanction placed upon your soul, to empty and cast off your identity and illuminate Him to all. Amen.
She sat on the cliff’s edge, worried of the looming depths below. But that villain, fear, did not kidnap her in this moment. Just inches from her body sat the boy, the boy whose voice was a distant memory and yet a comforting guidepost. The soft warm green and white flannel gently clung to his body, matched by the worn through cobalt blue vans sneakers. They rested on a hand-woven Mexican blanket smelling of years of bonfires, s’mores, and laughter. During the anticipation, the boy spoke ham and cheese stories, the ones that have been tasted hundreds of times yet have never become musty or rotten. You might see these stories as simple, you might see this moment as simple, you might see this boy as simple. But this regular boy, with faded sneakers and outdated jeans, represented possibility, a beautiful possibility. She quickly smiled and shifted her gaze from his mystic blue gray eyes onto the displayed explosions of color and fire before them. She longed to be nowhere but here, for here was her textbook independence day.
