Mary, Honey

Mary, honey, were you sick?

Did you choke your crackers back?

Did your juvenile faith burn like a wick 

Until you felt and knew your lack?

• • •

Mary, honey, did you cry

When the hark of an angel took your womb?

You must have wondered how and why

And what and when, from whom?

• • •

Mary, honey, was it hard

When you traced your too young breasts?

Your perfect skin now stretched and scarred;

Roadmaps of an uninvited guest. 

• • •

Mary, honey, did you wince 

At the mirror in your swollen, foreign body?

With each growing inch, hard-pressed to convince 

That you’re not some ugly slab of naughty. 

• • •

Mary, honey, were you scared?

Scared, as in, will he be who they expect?

Their “Son of God” could be impaired,

The cord tugged tight around his flimsy neck. 

• • •

Mary, honey, did it hurt?

And did your milk come in in time?

After you thrust him out to cloth and dirt, 

How long until he was breathing fine?

• • •

I ask all of this, Mary, honey, because I’ll be a mother, and sometimes it helps just to talk to another. I’m with hiccuping child now, scared to death my love can’t save her. I’m willing to bet you lost sleep, too, but perhaps your love was braver. As brave as you were, you couldn’t save him either, the all-sustaining Vine. But I’m indebted to that mother pain because it’s precious yours who will soon save mine. ⁣

I wish you could see it, this planet pregnant with expectation. And you lugged him full term, the wild Hope of a nation. I guess I want to say thank you for feeling, for knowing, for making it real. Your teenage sacrifice now teaches us to grieve, to trust, to heal. ⁣

Oh, Mary, honey, don’t you see? Your simple agree is what held the key, and baby Christ with you became Christ with me.