'for your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.' no, in all these things we are more than conquerors.

i am sisyphus again. milk and honey i have not, nor fleeting lands teeming with dark eyes and brambles. patches of callouses everywhere, i mull the mead with herbs and roseoil for the tabernacle. priests of every stature, from pagans to kings, troubling the corners of god's robe with sacrifices, professional mourners all. i tend the flocks at night, when no one else is willing, and travel long stretches of desert in search for her voice i captured and imprisoned years before, when nazarites were but boys playing around their wells and suckling their mothers' teats for cheese and wine, growing taller into frigid, aestival rooms. map of stars never ceased to blind, and great arcs of land laid mute before me, trimmed to their mildew and scratchy fur, naked and shy. my job was not contentment. little caves i found, lush with wild leaves and ripe berries, provided resort before wolves chased us out to another mountain, too high into the clouds to see, whose droning chorus stilled the lambs' pleading. their wool for sleep, their placid composures for amnesiac sores. why the strong, bloody stains marking its entrance? i never quite made the climb up, where the air was thin and blasphemous, tight around the throats wherefore no screams circulated crowded rays above my head, never reaching even the cautious birds migrating to cooler climates: wary eyes and beads of antediluvian ink sprayed out in wild tentacles of recollection. i collapsed and saw a ladder i had no interest in climbing, where the trumpets snuck down the rungs with tongues flickering for my sweat, praying "o where art thou, slave of slaves? thy master plies thy bones, piece by piece, until the reckoning morn'. warm to his breast, as the last hill to stake and tremble." ceaselessly, they were the golden speck of flies spawning the humid riptide of day. the walk down was quiet and still, when neither soul nor hair breathed: a crushing, tended finality sought to teach, but only managing to leave the smoke of a soldered strip of copper. limbs of torn eaters come to collect debts and interest, their words pared down to bare letters i could not piece together, with only that metallic brace to guide my translation into their marshland, i found seats to rest as the skin cooled and the bubbles limped down to red, angry boils. i came home, laid down beside my bed and counted the number of times i failed, timing each decision of end with a dull ringing in my head: her voice humming, "warm my breasts, love, they tremble to your hands, your hands, your hands..."
as if they were something precious.