Shriven
No sound falls on my ears, no vision soothes my eyes. My tongue is without speech, my vocal cords are cut. I am deaf, blind, mute, wretched, beyond the reach of myself. I am six feet deep in cold mud, sealed into my grave. No one walking the earth above could hear or help me. I gave no thought to mortality, so I did not sense its chilling breath on my throat. Nothing is left me but those who share this house of death and they are no comfort to me, nor can I give them aid. All grace is dried up, like the boards I feel a few inches before my face. Wood slides against wood, a dim light floats before me in patterned squares. Then you speak and I answer you. I, a suicide, can still dare to beg, to demand your mercy with the voice which you have just loosed. This love, unleashed, would be fatal, but you restrain it—you are used to our brittle weakness. My sight and hearing come awake, my lungs fill painfully, like a newborn’s, but it is sweet to breathe! My tongue is paralyzed with disbelief and trembling gratitude. You send me out; I part the heavy drapes and go. Who can comprehend this wounding mercy? And who on the street can see, as I leave this stony sacred place, that I am joyful Lazarus, reprieved? I shed my grave-clothes on the steps and run out dancing and in song. Truly you make ecstatic right from all my mean, soul-numbing wrong.
—Amanda Glass
Amanda Glass graduated in 1999 from Franciscan University of
Steubenville, where she majored in Humanities and Catholic Culture.
Her poems have appeared in The Lyric and in Garlands of Grace:
An Anthology of Great Christian Poetry. She and her family live in
western Maryland, where she is a full-time wife and mother.
