Savior/Martyr

Savior
(As told by Mary Magdalene)

He was seen as more by some, less by others.
As a savior, or a rebel.
He lived his life through his heart,
being the sinew, trying to hold the world together.
And I ached for him, being his confidant.

There are things the scriptures never wrote,
because paper could not duplicate
the fathoms of his heart.
He was a man before he was anything else,
and I was a woman who had learned to live in silence.
Until he spoke my name, in a public prayer.
Then, I realized, that I mattered.

We belonged to each other in the quiet ways
that had no witnesses.
The world saw a teacher and a follower.
But in the small hours, when the lamps dimmed
and the desert wind pressed against the walls,
we were simply two souls
who had found comfort in the shared rest.

He would come to me with the dust of the day
still clinging to his robe.
His shoulders heavy with the ache
of being needed by everyone.
By the weight of being heralded.
Yet so often misunderstood.

I would pull him close
and the tension in him would loosen,
as if my hands reminded him
that he was allowed to be human.
There, in that steadiness between us,
a warmth moved like breath between our bodies,
that earnestness of each other’s nearness.
Not just passion for the body’s sake,
but the deep, quiet joining
of two people who carried too much alone.
An intimate compassion.
We acknowledged our aches,
so we could let them go.

Is that what a marriage is?
The sharing of burdens,
and then a soft place to fall.
-The trueness of that other heartbeat in the dark,
then yes, we were that.

He loved me with a gentleness
and asked for nothing,
yet gave generously.
And I loved him with the certainty
of a woman who had finally found
the one place in the world
where she was not misunderstood.

The historians will argue forever
about what we were.
Let them.
There’s a sanctity within all secrets.

The truth lived in the spaces no one else saw.
Like in the way he rested his forehead against mine.
Or the way our hands found each other’s
in a crowd, without needing to search.
And, in the way our breaths would align,
as we shared the nights between us.

Call it what you must,
to satisfy the biblical books.
Only I know that in those quiet,
hidden moments,
we were a man and a woman
who loved each other
unjudged.
~
Martyr

They say grief softens with time.
But they do not know what it is
to lose the one person
who ever looked at you without judgment.
Who offered adoration.
Who scoffed at the public scorn.

The world moves on as if he were a story
that had a finality.
The brutality buried, in centuries of sand.
But I still feel the essence of him
in the empty moments of my life.

I miss the weight of his presence;
nothing mythical, and not holy.
Just the quiet gravity of a man
who carried too much
and still found room to be gentle.

At night I reach for him
before I remember there is no one there.
My hand clasps his robe;
his scent, when he was still whole.
The sleeves are limp, lifeless,
but I drape them upon me
as if it were one of our yesterdays.

I miss the way he breathed beside me,
slow and uneven after long days,
as if he trusted me enough
to let the world fall away for the evening.

I miss the warmth of his shoulder
when he leaned into me without speaking.
The way our silences shifted together,
after his days of proclamations.
We were the two halves of a sacred truth
that the world never cared to comprehend.

They will tell stories about him;
miracles, parables, prophecies.
But none of them will speak of the man
who rested his forehead against mine
when he was too tired to stand alone.
None of them will know
how his absence feels like a second death
every morning when I wake
and remember he is not coming back.

I do not wait for angels.
I do not wait for signs.
I wait only for the ache to lessen,
and for the memory of his touch
to stop feeling like a fresh wound.

But love does not vanish
just because the body that held it is gone.
It lingers, more stubborn than life,
in the places he once stood,
and then in the way my hands tremble,
wanting to hold someone who is no longer here.

If there is a resurrection,
it is only this:
that I carry him in the quiet of my chest,
in the sorrow that refuses to fade,
and in the love that outlives the man.

It is my faith;
He is gone, but not gone from me.

~~~