The first time I saw you,
They thrust you in my arms like an old midwife hands a mother her firstborn child: blinded by years of exposure to the solder that binds together eternity and time; in the key moment of representation forgetting how bright he is, who was and is and ever shall be, but to our senses is not.
With dark eyes I took you and carried you up
to the altar,
where he waited for you
and received you,
just like he always has.
The carpet was red and
crusted with wax and ash.
Then I groped my way back to the back of the nave, dazed by eyes that surely guessed I was new to the world. And my mother declared, “The bread you bore has become our Lord.”
And I looked back at the slab where I left you and sighed.