THE CRUCIFIED.
Martha looks up at the Crucified above her bed His arms outstretched and the hands nailed or pinned in this particular case into the wood and the head lying to one side as if the neck had been broken and the eyes closed as if he had seen too much of this world and its stupidity and the body battered and bruised by time and its hands over the years and looking up she gazes at the feet nailed down good and proper as her father used to say in his drunken stupors and as she looks she remembers vaguely the first time she was aware of looking at the Crucified on the huge crucifix on the wall above her grandfather’s bed as he lay dying his coughing voice almost frightening her off and the light caught the arms of the Crucified and the face and the features and she had stared and stared and had asked who’s that man? And her grandfather had looked up and said Christ Crucified and after he had muttered and coughed blood and phlegm and she had stared and stared and wanted to reach up and touch the arms and legs but He was too high and out of reach and her mother had taken her off before the old man snuffed it and now gazing at the Crucified she sees the way the arms seem so thin to hold the sins of the world the hands pinned so well so deeply and she gets up and standing on her bed reaches and touches the feet with her fingers and rubs the feet easing off what little dust had gathered since she had last cleaned with a damp cloth some weeks back and carefully she unhooks the crucifix from the wall and with small strides across the bed gets down on the floor and walks to the window where she opens the curtains and lets the light in and sees how much the light brings out to her eyes the eyes of the Crucified the lids closed yet she imagines He sees her anyway sees through the lids sees through cloth and walls sees her as she really is not as she wants to be seen by others and she kisses His feet slowly making each touch of her lips count feeling His feet sensing movement sensing maybe His life pulse there and while she kisses she remembers the times as a child she had taken the small crucifix to bed with her and had laid the Crucified on the pillow beside her and had whispered to Him all her woes and worries and had told Him about her father and his ways and the times he had scolded and beat her and sometimes she had taken the larger Crucified to bed with her the one her mother had bought from the church sale which was all battered and worn yet she loved it loved the Crucified there with his stronger arms and his hands bent inwards by the nails and the blood painted onto the plaster flesh and she recalled holding the crucifix against her chest and letting the Crucified hear her heartbeat pushing him between the small mounds of her breasts and now as she brushes a finger against His head and licking her finger washes away specks of dust she sees herself as a teenager with Mary and Magdalene and playing truant from school and tucked in her pocket the small rosary with the tiniest Crucified she had and she had rubbed her thumb across Him as the other two girls talked of boys and smoked cigarettes and drank liberated gin and sat and laughed and giggled yet all the time her hand clutched the Crucified holding Him close feeling Him there silent calm and loving and her thumb rubbing over Him and now watching the light on the Crucified from the window she kisses His head wishing He would open His eyes and look at her and she out of love for Him would rip off the nails in hands and feet and kiss better the wounds and hole in His side and show Him her love the love she cannot be rid of a love she can never hide.
