Just Call Me Lazarus

A people born wearing their funeral clothes,

we don't even know there's a stone. We sit in our grave, 

dirty feet, dirty cave, and trace patterns into 

the ground. The sweat of our brow drips in rivulets;

a salt-imbued lie of release. A taste of the sea, 

of a river, a spring, of a well we're too haughty to drink. 

We think we're so rich in our tatters. We think 

we're so bright in the dark. We think we are kings

in our coffins and schemes like this is the best that

we are. Like there isn't a voice small inside us. 

Like there isn't a breath in our lungs. Like there 

isn't a world waiting just out that door if we'd

only stand up and explore. Like there isn't a man

calling out to us. Like we don't hear our name in a

prayer. Like we don't see the stone for the lid 

it's become on the room we see fit to call home. 

I no longer choose to abide this. I no longer want to

subside. I want to be strong and impassioned and 

torn by the wind and His name and the horn. I

want to be fashioned for battle. I want to wear

armor and light. I want to sing hours and hours on

end with no ceasing in day or in night. I want to

feel roads underneath me. I want to drip words

from my tongue. I am done with the silence, the darkness,

the violence, that my evil days often had sung.

I no longer revel in drunkenness. In sculpting my

face to a norm. In starving and fighting, in lying

and hiding, in valuing how I perform. We need to 

rely on the 'other'. That power found outside our own.

I need to escape, to find spirit, take shape- this 

tomb is no longer my home. I will resurrect. 

          © Sarah Fletcher, 2013

The Resurrection of Lazarus
St. Paulinus in Welling
from Wikimedia Commons