Exegesis

Ours is a conversion story, all stories,
a parable as always: waiting in darkness

near unlit caves, we came bearing water,
bearing spices too good to season

or save: darkly that stone unrolled and both
of us, shyly, bet on the coming. Impossible

virgins and rumored whores, collectors
and payers of taxes unknown, ours

was always a laddering down, a climbing
to meet where the frame shook

its hardest. We confessed, lost
heads, each crossed the foot of the other

with tears and hair and the babe in your arms
was not suffered to me because we thought

better judgment. Of the stories we knew
most ended in haloes of fire, with lions

asleep on full bellies, a horse for each
damned direction and limb and those who rose

from death to new life more often than not
woke up alone. What, then, becomes

of a heart on its stake? Better ask what
comes next: the ladder holds. Horses spit

through the reins. And desire, its own
righteousness, makes of one basket

enough. Maybe there was no miracle,
but even the unreligious tell

stories: of how each restored sight
requires the blind, each laying of hands

an open sore, how for every wound
that gets sealed up, there is also left a scar.

Elizabeth Langemak

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RL