theology of staying

I know that there is an afterlife because you are there, waiting for me, table in the back. I am happy to see you again. You will unveil something familiar and holy.

something somatic, yet internal,
affects the hebrew narrative —
shiftings organs, scrolls in throats, hardened ventricles
and the spasm of redactive hands. the unconscious
of the bible is passive, residual.

the faith it evinces is the same;
felt in the stomach, in fingers, in the hole near
your heart. these hermeneutics, a hum and a satiety.
your chest, a cavern.

he is the referent
of a haiku --

now, he is miles from the valleys of nebo.
now, he is a voicemail asking me to pick up bone broth.
now, he is in babylon’s furnace.

i.
men from nazareth aren’t owed mourners, so they set aside oil and myrrh in the final nights. spice and sweat and sand under nails now. the rabbi felt heavier than He seemed, and raising His arm to fold the shroud under His nape took effort. some men have the kind of eyes that announce their need for shutting.

ii.
there is a plea for salome to pass the pita. even those not from Heaven know she’ll smile, simper, refuse. the smell of roasted vegetables and myrrh hangs and one of the zebedee sons says he needs a nap. the rabbi shrinks at that, then reminds Himself there are some verses still until the mount of olives. now there is only a meal, and the heat from peter’s skin, and the heaviness of silver pieces in a pocket, and the smile in salome’s voice, and

iii.
Heaven is here,

iv.
He refuses voyeurism in His final moments, no sight is possible. removing Himself from visibility, the rabbi from nazareth quotes His favorite psalm. eloi eloi, you know. His shoulder pangs in a pain He’ll remember. His nephesh, the vapor of His selfhood in His throat, falters and flees. there is no final spectacle here, only sounds and rhythms and affective yells from feminine voices at His feet.

v.
and then He is not.

God’s mother tongue is Aramaic. His father’s tongue, though, is Hebrew.

The difference only matters with one consonant: the ו. In Aramaic, it’s pronounced waw; in Hebrew, vav. In mouths -- ours and His -- waw mimes a hole; vav is a bite. God’s registers are like that: the matrixial language, semiotic and open, and the order of the father, halting and insistent.

I am trying to tell you that God speaks in consonants that evade monolinguism, that He auto-incarnates in a body that knew both waw and vav, knew how to translate masculine to feminine and back again, knew, most of all, how good it can feel for tongues to slip.

Duration has no value; how long do sacrifices last? God’s first death is in the Babylonian exile, second death on the cross, tissue pulled from nail. The harrowing of Hell, then, is the third time God dies and it’s no more warm, no more bitter, than the last two. I think God dies a fourth time, too, but maybe that’s something only I saw.

In the Near East, God came to you
like clouds, like toes on holy ground, like messengers that touch
your nephesh (נֶ֫פֶשׁ) -- I lift to touch His hands, to let Him touch me;
He’s in the Babylonian wilderness you and I lie in.
He’s in the confessional. He’s in my brother’s cat,
going into the next life.

I reinvent to nasturtiums that lilt like newness.
I'm new. I reinvent into this new thing, eyes the color of nectar,
hair the color of licorice. In the vase there's lillies, baby's breath,
oozy little leaves. In his room there's a tapestry of a castle,
purple, vampy. I'm in the unlit rooms of its halls.
There's no verse here. I am roaming in the halls of this castle,
on the tapestry, like a Radcliffe novel, with wax bones
tucked in corners. I'm the wax bones.