After seven hundred years of
cookies and stale bread, let me dream of Rome and arrive in California for what
could be my last year of life. The Mediterranean Sea holds the heart of exodus
in modern day- Men drowning as they run away from Spring, doomed to return
again to nothing, where everything is welcomed. Be mine- dehumanized and naked
in a public place. I am the prophet and I will only speak French. I hope you
tell this story beautifully, something with borrowed music and seldom seen
light.
We met there in a city neither of
us knew. I look insulted because we speak different languages and you were
drunk. There are decades between us and I am compelled to touch the bridge of
your nose and confess, “I can not discern my right nor my left.” And I touch the
bridge of your nose so I can draw it on the napkin you used and left, and again
I touch your nose so I can draw you, so I can orient myself to the page.
Jesus walked in the room, I
canvased for him. We are petitioning time, though every passer-by thinks we are
sick men, tired and lonely. You missed his entrance, but he saw you and he saw
me. We three looked at one another, and you swelled by the will of Genesis in a
womb you didn’t know you had and we all smell of over ripen tangerines.
Jesus walked in the room; I no longer work for
him. He walked up to me as you watched,
and I confessed, “My words are worth their weight in gold.” You watched as he
walked to me and audibly you mumbled the mantra of the urban youth.
“I do not believe.”
We met there in that bar, in the
city having just walked the same sidewalk where I gawked at you. We were both
drunk and I refused to speak to you, but I touched you and Jesus walked in. We
were swollen and you were pregnant and I wanted to sell you something.
"
** Written for Sarah's photo book**
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