Christ Born Silent
“Why isn’t he crying?”
I look up to the Angel her sleeves rolled back
Covered in my fluids
Thousands of drops coat her fingers
My blood the brightest, cakes her pale hands,
The hands holding my son
He’s not the glass doll in the nativity set
He’s limp
Silent
Silent night, holy night
She looks up with blue eyed horror
This is not the perfect scene
He was supposed to be loud, hungry and gorgeous
I look as she takes a single white nail and cuts the cord
One swipe we are no longer one
The boy I screamed to hold
He didn’t scream back
Silent night, holy night
She rushes away holding him
Like if she doesn’t cradle his neck and back He might fall in two
That’s when it started, my sobs
The need to stand up
I was bleeding, split in two
I tried to stand and cried like a dog hit by it’s owners truck
Shock and need to get away, away, away
Joseph wrapped me in his arms
To comfort me?
No, to keep me still
Pin the weeping cow as her calf
is ripped toward the meat drawer
Next to me in the dirty broken barn
The donkey’s ears twitch
Eyes wide as it lets out a quiet huff
I knew she was a Jill
In her eyes was a mother
who’s waited like me before
Silent night, holy night
The Angel shook
I could hear her teeth chatter
God didn’t prepare her for a dead savior
Her wings were tall
making a white feathery wall
Blocking me from my boy
I hate her
She delivered my son
She’s saving my son
She’s here to protect us and I hate her
If he doesn’t live
What am I?
A game
Nine months of pain
Morning sickness
Feet swollen into hooves
Tears fat and stupid
I was a dancing fool
The bells ringing above my head
I thought it confirmation he was with me
All it had been was a jester’s hat
Hot tears rolled down my cheeks
I pushed myself away from Joseph
who loved me through everything
My pretty saintly bullshit became his
I was an idiot
I hate god
Give me my son
I’m not asking I’m telling
Don’t let him be a painful transaction
Don’t let him die in a crash he didn’t cause
Don’t make me the foolish dancing monkey
I was fourteen dammit when you asked me
Of course I’d say yes
How dare you
How fucking dare you take my boy
My beautiful sweet, gorgeous, giving, dead, dead, dead-
A single long cry that made my aching core sew itself together
My tears felt like foreign objects on my skin
I didn’t know why they’d be there when’s he’s here
The Angel holds him like a precious thing
A holy thing
A gorgeous gorgeous thing
All mine to love and hold
She sets him in my arms
one hand on his neck the other on his back
I grin like a fool
He’s covered in the filth from my body
I lay a hand on his naked chest his heart beating
It’s gonna run dry one day
To bleed away all wrongs and make all rights
as gorgeous as him
But right now he’s making little squeaks
Tiny confused cries
And when he latches onto my chest I feel him feed
His crying stops
It’s a silent night, a holy night
That’s when I understand why the whole world sings