When the Romans drove nails into Jesus’s hands and feet,
When those whom he had healed wept,
Do you think God – watching his boy – felt worry?
Do you think he was sorry?

Was he sorry, as Jesus cried for someone?

Scripture tells us he cried for God-
‘Why have you forsaken me, Father?’

In my heart, he cried for his mother.
Who else, in a moment of such agony?
It may have been God who put him here – on this earth of sin and greed and hate but –  
It was Mary who bore him.

She wailed and bled and prayed as her body was the heavenly vessel between Divine and Man.
And she fed him, from the same body.
She raised him.

It was Mary who cleaned his wounds;
Who held him as cried,
Who kissed his baby-feet,
And spun him in a dozen circles,
Just to hear him laugh and smile and –

Jesus is screaming.

Does he feel Mary’s heart breaking?
Does he hear her, wailing and prayering  

‘He is mine!’
She cries.
‘He is mine and you cannot have him!’
Whether she is cursing God or the Romans,
No one knows.

Do you think God – watching his boy – felt as if he had done something wrong?
Jesus is his son, yes.
As the Angel Gabriel told us,

But as God watched the Romans string up that child
Brown skinned and black-eyed and beautiful
Do you think he realized that – in the way he saved humanity –
He had given not only his only begotten son,
But Mary’s Baby?

When Eve awoke in a puddle of blood,
Red stains down to her knees,
Stomach twisting,
Her Beloved Adam frowning

Did she pray?
Did she fall on her knees, and beg God for an answer?

‘How could I have known?
I have not known deceit, o lord, how could I have known?
Have you punished Adam?
Did he not eat the fruit the same as I?’

The truth was, for Eve,
That she would never know.
For she had no mother to explain to her.

‘His sin is not as great as yours,
And nor will it ever be,
For you are she,
And He is He.’

The wretched truth of living as the First Woman
Is that you are Mother of All
And yet, Daughter to None.

The Iliad echoed in my ears as I gazed at his back-
The curve of his spine, the curl of his hair,
I laughed,
And they call me a God.

Those who call me a God have never seen him.
Not the way I have.
Unburdened by his title.
The title I placed upon him.

And I longed for the war: for the battle shouts and the fighting.
I looked away from him.
Was I doomed- doomed in the way that fabled Warrior was?
No. No I will not.

I will not sacrifice my love,
As Achilles so sacrificed his.
Hephaestion lays beside me,
Skin hot and copper-gold.

Achilles loved, and so did I-
Not with the weakness of men-
But the Hunger of Gods