I.

A pair of urns, thrown against the belly bark skin of a tree
and busted. The fruit hanging above, pointing down
in double-edged swords, falls like icicles around the collection of shards
lying at the base of the tree. When you eat this fruit,
you walk away with a belly full of knives that
jostle as you walk, points reaching forth and bearing edges
that split open your gut to reveal you
as a naked, muscled skeleton underneath. Who told you
that you were naked?

The edges of your flayed glory
curl back to let the knives glisten inside your opened ribcage
for your Maker to see. You sword-swallowed
for secrets, drunk by a temptation tongue
already bisected and bleeding venom past teeth and lips:
a schizophrenic angel’s work. He honed the blade,
divined where to place its edge, and then cleaved you
asunder. You wish you could hear the last song of roses
as the point of another angel’s fire blade bites into your back
to make you march: but the clang of knife blades colliding in your chest
dim out their last few notes as you are marched out of the garden,
never to return.

II.

Another garden, another urn. This one is tipped over,
spilling blood, sweat, tears, prayers, and roses
out of His mouth and onto the ground. The young man
is on his knees, pleading for the chalice with the
jagged, glass-shattered edge to pass by His lips
without demanding its deepest draught:
the chalice of nails, whips, roughly hewn wood, thorns,
and sword. But it will not leave, and the roses
at His feet shiver, already feeling thorns
growing backwards into their skins and burying their tips
until the points reach and wound their cores. Under
the night’s watchful midnight moon eye, he quickly
gathers the roses up and slides them back into the urn
before he is stolen away by the guards
to become a man of spilled roses and broken pottery shards.

III.

The sun’s eye slowly opens on
another garden, this time growing up
around a scrubbed white tomb,
cradling it with green and floral arms. The shattered urn
inside the tomb has taken three days to knit Himself
together. The rose petals were ripped away and scattered
by wind, rumor, and the bottoms of frightened sandaled feet
fleeing away to hide from marching armies of nails and crosses with
their names upon their tongues: but in this morning’s eastern sunrise,
they slowly arrive from every direction,
floating in a cloud congregation above the sealed tomb. And they
knit themselves together: petal to petal to stem to pistil to stamen
until they are a family of long-stemmed blooms
again.

The stone is pried away from the mouth of the tomb. The mended urn
is just inside, and the roses fall into His mouth, finding
rest again, standing stately inside and casting out their
fragrance. The young man’s eyes open, and He rises up
from the rough stone slab inside where
shard by shard by piece have been pulled together for three days,
erasing the jagged seams of His breaking as each piece
clicked back into place. As He exits the tomb, the first thing He smells
is the roses, gathered and blooming near the opened mouth and
the defeated stone rolled onto its back with its eyes
shut to the burgeoning daylight. The roses
are the first things that greet Him as He emerges
into the newly awakened world.

Written 4/23/11
© 2011 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.