where the story pivots

maybe—

if you’ll spare a minute to consider

a new way to look at old things—

maybe the part of the story 
worth retelling for millennia,

worth turning again and again

through our fingers like beads,

an image we reach for when

ghosts rattle doors in the dark,

is not the scene where the man dies

arms stretched in interrupted embrace

eyes in descent—

or even the vanishing part days later

when grief stands open-mouthed

beside emptiness

maybe the story pivots on each point in time

when we say, drawing breath from the

oldest wells of fear and self-loathing,

when we say,

kill him! we’ll find our own way!

maybe—

listen, it could be true after all—

maybe the second coming waits

for us to shout something else,

just once to decide

not to kill Jesus,

to let him finish explaining grace

and this new way of being he mentioned