He walks towards you, stumbles, really. It’s hard

To walk well with a hole in your side.  Why, you ask.

Why was I born?  What purpose was there in my existence?

Who am i?

Where were you anyway?  What the hell were you thinking

letting me live my life the way I wanted?  Why didn’t you, I don’t know, leap out of the clouds in a halo of light,

or something, something to make me see?

He still makes no reply, only walks towards you, limping slightly.  It’s hard

to walk well with holes in your ankles and he’s got two.

You shout,

It’s your fault!  I didn’t know?  How could I?  You never spoke to me, you never visited me!

What did you do anyway that I should follow you?

But the answer is there before you speak the words.

It’s written in the wrists of him who approaches,

it’s chiseled into the brow of the man coming towards you.

He died for you.

BUT I DIDN’T BELIEVE YOU! 

You should have said something, done something to MAKE me believe!

IT’S NOT MY FAULT!

Desperately you try to avoid looking at the figure stepping over the bloody cross-piece,

the one stained red with crimson flows.  They should have been yours, you know.  My teachers

and professors, my friends and parents, my lovers and wife,

my colleagues and classmates, none of them believed, none of them have to face you do they?

But you know that they are also asking the same questions

of the one drawing nearer and nearer to you.  Why didn’t you prove yourself while I had the chance,

you rage.  It’s your fault.  You could have persuaded me

by giving me evidence you were there.  I never knew you existed.

Yet while you say that you become aware of that place,

that place deep, deep inside,

untouched by education’s corrupting breath,

unshaken by society’s caressing persuasion;

the place that yearns for something.  In that place you knew he was real.

You knew all the quaint notions you scoffed at when you bothered with them at all

were applicable to you.  He raises his arms, and you first think it’s to embrace you.

He steps into the light and you gaze upon perfection.

White robes covered, not stained, in blood adorn his body,

but you can see where the soldiers pierced his side and mashed the thorny crown on his head,

and drove the spikes into his wrists and ankles. 

He’s perfect.

You step towards him, then glance at yourself.

Racked with disease, filthy to the bone, vile beyond belief, you recoil.

The gesture he made was of sorrowful mourning.  He is beautiful and you are the opposite.

The embrace comes from the hideous serpent that hopelessly chuckles in your ear as he pulls you away from the one. 

Save me, you scream.

The sweetest voice you ever hear answers, But I did.

An original composition by David Smith.