By Fran Lock
that i might wear the robe the desert owed me. the robe the desert chose me. an insatiable staple of hair. i too have felt this resignation in the belly, rissom of grit in a red eye stretched around insomnia. not deprived, bereft, a grief that is both the surplus and the absence of feeling. the eye, matchsticked open, always the eye. his lips are dry: uncut pages slit apart. a secret needle in the body, swinging from zero to zero to – i was brushing the night from my lap in crumbs. death poured into his long skull like champagne into a shoe; the lagan, a bolt of black linen, streaming from his back. or the jordan. hot strip of terse cloth, washing itself in itself. mary, i too have tempered my tongue in salt, crowned my mouth with an idiot’s vow. that the desert might enter me. here, now, unpleasantly stabled in summer, burn for a clean and cutting heat. death holds itself over july, the hand of a child held over the stove. his hand. by the wrist. a scream he wrapped around refusal, names flew out of him like birds. these are not birds. in the desert, the wings are wallets, misfire and flit, open themselves. to the air. no one asked, why all the paths to rapture are made of dirt, white dirt. or what his body weighed inside of scent. mary, the sky, it executes its blue routine, bluely. his hard weight spread upon the earth, inside of scent, trailing the maelstrom behind him. or else, forced forward. loss is loss is loss, is it not? no. and that is their ruthless and delicate design. the years you spent in hiding. of entrapment or escape. his name was everywhere: inscribed, skirted, declared and finally. grief was midwife to this melee. i would follow you. who needs must come out swinging when you want only to kneel.
Fran Lock’s latest book, Love is Stronger than Death: Mary Magdalene and the Insurrection of Jesus is available here.
