I did the house chores, all the furious ones that go undone. And I had just started to dramatically sit when he asked if I’d join him on the porch. Well, that sounds nice, so I pulled the screen door to and let the circus of a spring-drenched afternoon spill in behind me. 

Just as our bodies settled into stiff wicker, we realized our feet had stayed chilly from the belly of inside, so we scooted them past the slab of covered concrete and let the sun openly lick them warm. And just as they were warm, he goes, “I’ve been bad about my water today” and had to go get himself a cold glass at once. 

I noticed my dog with his wiry coat that’s grown way too shaggy for summer. He situated himself mid-yard to bask and only had time to polish the left paw clean before he forfeited the scalding grass for a lonely patch of shade. A museum of weeds stood stubbornly still around him — don’t get comfortable, I thought — and there it came, a welcome wind to take them dancing. 

At last, we picked up the pages of our neglected books (mine of poems, his of rum) when sure as shit, a band of a million grasshoppers descended upon my tired concentration. Their erratic chirping, more like a buzz. Perturbed, I looked up and watched them live the lives they deserve. My eyes darted forcefully back to the task in my lap, but before the author could finish her thought, the hushed static of a baby monitor hatched into the faintest cry of an expired nap. I surrendered to her crib, and poetry aside, it’s like we laid eyes on each other for the very first time.

Is there any way of knowing what this Friday would have been without the grace of her interruptions? Goodness, that’s something I’d rather not think of.

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.