In honor of the feast day of Mary Magdalene, I wanted to share a poem I wrote honoring her sacrifices, strengths, and doubts,. This is from my long-in-progress Lamentations series, which imagines Biblical characters in their darkest moments. 

I’ve scraped my palms bloody
trying to roll away that stone, teacher mine,
but it appears the Romans can keep their word after all.

Does my visitation surprise you, Son of Man?
Did you really expect me to wash away your memory like
lamb’s blood from a doorway simply because
I can no longer kiss your calloused hands,
hear the Galilee in your Aramaic,
doze off to the lulling rhythm of your breath?
I thought you better acquainted with my stubbornness, lord.
You are my Sabbath and I will observe you
regardless of how many drink to your death.

Where shall I begin?
Your mother’s been very kind to me;
she makes sure I eat and I ensure she sleeps.
We are bound by blood, she says, bound by
the communion wine which stained us up to the elbows
when we washed and anointed your broken body.
I wonder if she realizes adopting a crossroads-girl from Magdala
will never fill the hole left by a martyr-boy born under the Eastern star.

Peter cannot breathe for missing you,
and John weeps like a woman in labor.
The rest have retreated, drawn themselves into hiding
like sightless creatures blinded by the light of a new day.
It’s as though everything we could have been
gave up the ghost on that tree with you
and now all that’s left are girls with ruined reputations
and boys with scarred fishermen’s hands
staring back at us from cups of bitter wine.

What do you want me to say, teacher?
That your people drink deep from the well of doubt,
that something dark and empty roams the streets at night,
crowing it’s bloody triumph from the temple walls?
That every gulp of air in a world without the promise of you
is like filling my lungs with poison, like drowning alive?
I came to give you word of your people, Yeshua, so here it is.

If ever you loved us,
do not abandon us now when all we have left
are riddles and parables and the hope of a third day.
Do not inflict us with Sheol,
with the absence of you.