Runaway

Runaway

by Emily Ruth Hazel

1

The Church is a conflicted bride,

her face flushed with passion,

her thoughts laced with doubt.

Home, to her, has never been

a single street address. She lives

everywhere, a temple built of flesh

instead of stone, a body

with a mind and a will of her own,

her heart not only red but also blue

and independent, her spirit

both radiant and restless.

How far she has wandered, dragging

the train of her newly washed dress

through sewage-flooded gutters.

When she returns, ready to change,

grace attends her, fingers gently

combing out the tangle of her hair, patiently

undoing seven times seventy buttons.

But legalism has one narrow foot

braced against the Church’s back, two hands

yanking taut the laces of a corset

made from the bones of faith,

that great, endangered mystery

that swims beneath the surface.

Perhaps this undergirding was designed

for the body, to shape and support,

but it digs into her skin,

pressing her inmost parts

to conform to its constraints.

Breath held captive, the bride

anxiously waits to be untied,

Pilate’s questioning of Christ

reverberating through her

centuries later—What is truth?

This far from paradise,

knowing good and intimate with evil,

how could her heart ever again

be naked without shame?

What would she look like if she lost

the fig leaf lingerie? What if

she continued the long walk down the aisle,

eyes fixed on her first love,

confessing all her uncertainties—

would God still have her?

2

Born hungry, we feed each other

false hopes like the warm milk of a lullaby.

Having outlived the famine years,

we think we are finally wise

and bite into the red delicious of deception,

handing it off to our partners.

The growl grows louder.

A tribe of exiles and runaways,

we are all in the same soup line,

but we front as if we’re in the queue

to enter an elite club where God is

a brass-knuckled bouncer

letting in only those who pay

or charm their way inside.

Angling for VIP passes,

we bleach our teeth with white lies,

wear pretense like concealer,

sweep shades of embellishment

in all the right places. We flaunt

our faux diamonds and flash our fake ID.

Fully knowing who we are,

knowing that we can’t afford the cover,

the host at the door waves us in

and offers us a bowl and spoon.

We grab what is given with one hand,

the other hand already reaching back

to draw the invisible velvet cord

across the path behind us:

we want to be the first inside

and the last to make the cut.

3

Measuring our steps like a barefoot bride

who wears a borrowed spoon

dangling from her necklace,

what is it we are limping toward?

Eden is a memory of the scent of

apple blossoms. What do we have left,

we ask, that we have not created

for ourselves? Our fingerprints on everything,

by this time, who can tell

how much of religion is manmade?

The river of life that streams from heaven

has been dammed and redirected,

human calculations managing the flow,

interrupting natural rhythms.

From the spinning belly of the same truck

out of which that wall was born,

poured as a thick, gray river of our own,

we have built a semblance of refuge on the shore.

Easily sold on the invention

of that which is concrete—

a substance that grows stronger

as it ages—who can blame humanity

for mixing with cement

our aggregate beliefs? We manufacture

cinder blocks of knowledge

weighty enough to withstand

minor disasters, but never

too heavy to lift alone.

Stacking rules upon rituals,

long ago, we tried to build a tower

that would scrape away the blue,

leave a keyhole in the sky

so we could see beyond,

but our tongues divided us;

our ladders toppled.

Among our tall attempts,

we have landscaped a courtyard instead,

an echo of the garden we once knew,

then sealed it with a glass roof

more transparent than our prayers,

turning the open space into yet another

structure to contain the wind,

to cage our fear of what we can’t control.

Everything within our reach

we have domesticated. But what can we do

with a wind that cannot be caught?