In Memory Of Her

*

“Leave her alone.”

And for the rest of my life, they do.

They are not supposed to look at me, but

sidelong glances and traitorous sounds tell them

I am crying,

and words I want to say are choked, stillborn.

I couldn’t tell them how I knew

unless they, too, saw it was obvious

that he was not Meant to stay with us forever.

He seemed to know it that day,

the way he ate so slowly, deliberately,

staring at people, boring into their eyes,

the occasional pause, blink,

seeing something we could, or would, not.

He was with us and not,

and I knew: it was time.

So I rushed to get the jar of spikenard,

my dowry,

and stepped over reclining men,

to his place.

With a pleading glance, I knelt down,

cracked the seal,

and poured out a portion, then the whole, of my hope

on his head, and then his feet.

Kneeling in fragrant mud, I wept

with the knowledge of what I had done:

I have given my future

To this man, who will die.

As that perfume filled the room,

He smiled, touched my chin, lifting it, and addressed me:

…you will not always have me

She has done what she could

anointing my body for burial

Amen, I say to you

wherever the gospel is proclaimed

what she has done will be told….

*

So I was left alone by men.

No one Understood, then;

truth, I barely understood myself.

But in that gift, my center shifted

And I knew

despite his coming death

that I was meant to be alone, for him, somehow.

*

All that strange sabbath,

after the catastrophe,

I cradled the broken jar,

losing myself

in the tang of lingering scent,

as I hoped.