I wear a torn place on my sleeve || Pontius

Behold, I will do something new,
  Now it will spring forth;
  Will you not be aware of it?
  I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
  Rivers in the desert.

Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation...

I wear a torn place on my sleeve.
It isn't as simple as that.

Pontius

The violins are a sweet song, and I like them much better than the cries of the dying and the ugly sound of a mob.

I like to think of myself as a gentleman. I'm not a bad man, not at all. I pay my taxes. Have a pleasant wife and a decent family. I do my job without deviation or bribery. I'm a servant of the people. Everything a governor should be. I'm not corrupt, not violent, just a genuinely good person.

So why do I sit here, cleaning blood out of my nails and pretending I can't see the way my hands are shaking?

My hands are clean. I have washed them many times.

But I can't escape the smell of blood. It's in my hair, in my hands, in the throats of the natives as they shout for it in the veins of the man who I am not responsible for, the one whose blood is running in rivers in Jerusalem.

He is not my responsibility. He is not my fault.

I stand up, thinking about going home. It's late, I think. My wife will be waiting up for me. It's long overdue for me to be headed home. And then I sit back down, feeling the olive trees around me and the weight of the world tipping dangerously. No. I can't go home. Not like this.

All of them shouted my name. Coupled it to things that I was afraid of. They say they know what they are doing.

No one knows the price of blood on your hands.

I don't allow myself to think about the one they call the king of the Jews.

He is not my responsibility.

If they had not brought up Caesar -

But they did. It doesn't really matter - I straighten and run my hands over the nails in the gate - I am a servant of the people. I will do as they ask.

My stomach churns. Somewhere, a murderer is laughing at his good fortune and getting drunk in celebration. Not that far away - I tell myself I can not hear the screams and smell the blood - there is a man on a hill who is innocent. I feel sick.

He is not my fault.

I never could get the hang of Passover. So  many Jews. Underfoot. Smelling of religion and subversiveness and mumbling frustration. I thought at first he was one of them. Just another Zealot calling for Roman blood.

He calls for his own blood.

He is innocent. I can not get past that.

I am all that a governor should be. I listened to my people.

So why do I stand, scrubbing at my hands as if they will never truly be clean, which, I think, they never will be?

Strange. I wash my hands and feel more dirty than before.

My wife has been crying her eyes out. She will say she knew it. She did. She was right.

No! I did what was right!

I can not get him out of my head. The way his tears were blood and his blood was water and the water that pours from the fountain is all blood too. I tell myself he is a criminal. I tell myself that the Jews want it this way. I tell myself that the lash in my hand was the scourge of justice.

I ignore the women - I refuse to give them names - who loved him most. His followers, who, with inked in lines on their bitter faces and frightened chewing-of-lips, cried their quiet tears.

The man they call the king called this love.

Love! Is this what you meant, you ignorant prophet?

Why can't I stop thinking of him? This is not the first death sentence I've given.

My stomach turns again.

He is not my responsibility. He is not my fault.

I wash my hands of you, you foolish martyr!

I look at my reddened nails and my heart seizes.

I will never be rid of him.

I know this now.

He will never really leave any of us, will he?

His silence is haunting. As deep as the ocean. Mysterious as death.

Or mysterious as love. I can not reconcile what I know and what the king said.

I feel the tug of life and of love in my stomach.

My hands shake.

He is not my responsibility.

He is

not

my

fault.



Love is irreconcilable.
(to be continued)

(Isaiah 43:19, Anais Nin's Henry and June, and W.S. Merwin's The Nails provide the epigraph.)