I am not who you thought I am
on the road from Jerusalem
to Jericho. the unbandaged body
left to the high-sun heat of the sand
and rock. the holy shall not
touch the dead
—they pass on the
other side of the wayside, the long flax
me'il of the broad-shouldered priest
flapping tranquilly
—though I breathe
and contain the entirety of my wretched,
sand-bruised being in that breath:
tell me, stranger, what is my blood-dried
breath to you, you who have come along
and taken the nothingness of my life
and placed it on your struggling
shoulders—what do the fractured
ribs matter under the gentleness
of your palms, what is the starved
weight to you as you prop it upon
the sighing ass. do you care for
every stranger with the love that
carries me to the inn. is my sin nothing
to you that you undo the
suffering our God has broken me with?
we must all be saviors to one another,
is what I can see through
my own bruised eyes in regarding
yours, squinting in the strong light of
the Jericho sun, the brunt color
of suffering taken on as their own, yet
knowing nothing of the breath of sin.