A broken tulip

This time, you cannot answer
enough. This hurting hunger for healing will never be
satisfied. Not in a million years.

So I said to the Teacher.

There is nothing you can do which will work backwards in time,
work forwards and sideways to heal billions of bruised women
with broken hearts, with weakened wills and muzzled minds and mouths.

You may offer to heal me, but what about them?
Women who have suffered and borne and borne and suffered —
whatever truth you can tell me, it becomes a lie
in the faces of these billions behind me. I am only one.

There is nothing you can do here.

(To my surprise I hear my own words echo back
in the voice of a man who also says to the Teacher:

This time, you cannot do enough.

How can you make up for all the times men were told not to be weak,
commanded not to crack under the load, under the pressure;
how can you take away the shame the millions of hearts shut
as silence drained the lives out of our women, our children?

How do we live
with ourselves
when the shadows of the billions of women our hands have hurt swarm the room,
and yet, we too were looking for something lost
when we took what wasn’t ours.
How do we let truth sweep through the walls we have set up, and still stand strong?
When we, in our hearts, we are still small children hiding under the covers.

Look to the women. Leave us alone. We’re losers.
There is nothing you can do
about us.)

There is nothing you can do here, Teacher.

You can heal our sick
but germs do not compare to the gender divide.

The Teacher smiles.
“What do you have?”

The man and I answer in unison with the billions and billions at our backs:
“Not nearly enough.”

The Teacher stretches out his hands
blesses the little we have

and breaks his body

the body of a man who never hurt a woman with his hands, his promises, his eyes,
never diminished, laughed off, mocked even one woman.

He breaks his body

the body of a man born of a woman, wept over by women,
blessed and nursed and cared for
by the hands, the purses of women.

He breaks his body

the body of a man
who cried tears
in the face of death, in the face of rebellion,
a body that felt hunger and weakness
and allowed the small ones of society
to care for him.

He breaks his body

which the world tried over and over to shame
in every way yet all the shame slipped off the shoulders of
this man.

He breaks his body
he places it in my hands,
“Take, eat.”

Faith is
tearing a chunk from the loaf
that looks so small
faith is
passing the bread to the man next to me
trusting
it will reach each face massed behind us
faith is
opening my mouth
to receive the gift
believing
it is there
and it is enough
it is more than enough
for all of us.

How can one body answer
the cries of so many?

Do you believe
that love sets a table
and invites enemies to dine;
that love is stronger
than the death between us?

Do you believe
that love has two hands
answering equally

the torn hearts which were meant to birth life,
the silenced wisdom meant to spark joy and blueprint the cosmos,
the frustrated minds built for strength
and

the bowed heads which were meant to wear crowns,
the restless energy meant to uplift an earth in gratefulness to God,
the clenched hands built for gentleness?

Take. Eat.
Remember. Believe.