DisCovered

DisCovered

(“[The Lord’s] intention in giving me this authority is to build you up, not tear you down.” 2 Corinthians 13:10b)

Buried beneath truckloads of shame,
beneath the heavy loam where breath is lost and
light barely breaks between the clods; he was still,
no, he was stiffened as the fright consumed the nerve endings
from finger tips to toes; clamping fists and eyelids clenched,
he would have held his breath forever, if forever was possible
to keep it from escaping.

They stood him up. Yes, someone discovered the burial mound.
The brushed him off. Yes, the mud stuck to his sight, to his bones.
They whispered long. Yes, the words were mixed, like blizzards in Spring.

He found his legs while the world spun against him.

He delayed his reply; would his past-tense stories be held against him?
He heard one hope; perhaps the night had stretched far enough that
morning was required.

They stood him up and brushed him off. He found his legs and turned around.

And 100 people stared at the emaciated corpse before them;
his rescuers spoke in uncertain terms (parsing their words, though)
while the little blood left drained from his face and the room spun while
the rest of them whispered their own stories (confidences trusted, lives
broken by the telling).

The promise, the restoration, the power, the indoctrination all
spilled like blood before him. Sick and nearly dead from wearied
cringing,
he hoped the syringe was a dream he could wake from. It was a
handgun he had to wait for, brandished by the promisers and
primed by the best pharisees and new-charisma followers who
could not tell the difference between their night-dreams and
a man’s daylight weeping.

He limps still. The wound is open still. The grave they found him in
was filled in long ago; it’s a hotel for conventions and he was
never invited to its groundbreaking or Grand Open-

ing.