FRIDAY

A Holy Week Prose Poem

Eli, Eli, Lema Sabbachtani?

A preacher preached, told the cracker to crack, pressured on all sides by my thumb, forefinger, and middle, and you are split in two. But you weren’t split in two: “not a bone was broken.” Your skin shredded and your spirit was trapped under the weight of your ribs and tissues and organs for hours until they got tired and slept. The body you assumed killed you, as it kills us all. In the end. Death’s weapon is always flesh. Throat muscles whimper until lungs are flooded, blood runs loose and wild in and out of the body until there’s no one left to take care of home, hearts are electrocuted into paralysis, brains are besieged and starved, unable to get the message across: keep going! 

Sawdust floats around my unprotected amateur eyes, leaping wildly from the plank everywhichway and softly parachuting to the ground. The wood is maturing, even under the sloppy touch of these inexperienced hands that glide along the edges, searching for imperfection. It is found, discovered by short sharp pain. Another pass with the rough sander, soothing it into fitness. No one did this for you. No, the coarse lumber you carried scraped across the tatters of your back with a billion imperfections, sins that stab like splinters. Did you feel them?

I’ve read big fat books replete with big fat words that stacked syllables like stones on the Tower of Babel, and yet “The Death of God” are four short words whose meaning lies beyond the firmament. It’s easy to get lost out there, but today my toes and knees are fused with dirt and hurt, grasping the rough-hewn beams, and there’s only one explanation I want—was it real when you said

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

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Note: This is the first of a four part series of prose poems (flash essays? prayers?) reflecting on Holy Week: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday.

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