The familiar voice that bids me
go to an unknown mountain
pierces my heart but stays the knife
in a trembling hand.
The deed’s undone,
yet the unspeakable lingers—Excerpt of Estrangement, James L. Crenshaw
And from on high, I feel it.
A pitch that rends my eardrums
Chafes me raw, until the silence renders me whole again,
No longer overflowing, as I was, with His voice
That which commands me, unknowable and vast.
I begged for a sign, my wife for a blessing;
We should have known to keep our mouths shut.
To let Him break His promise. But we cried out like fletchling birds, and
I heard it, awful and terrific, and I could not disobey
The familiar voice that bids me.
My son! My son, my son.
I held him in my arms as he bawled and squirmed,
Placed wine on his tongue to soothe him, held the blade to his skin, named him mine.
I am so sorry, my son, my son, my son, to have brought you here.
I stood witness to the curl of his beard, to the stray cloth strand he ties his hair with.
His chest now broad, his voice low and grinding as the stones he lifts from the field,
He prays for a child, as I had. He is of me. He will suffer for it.
My son, my son, my son, here I am. I have brought us both here.
Here, where the stones do not know you, here where I have been bid:
Go to an unknown mountain.
We walk alone. He asks me where the lamb is.
Stupid, foolish animals. Unbound, they do not struggle, for they have not known pain.
So unlike my son. Witty, he is, with eyes that catch the rabbits in their dens.
His back and hands are littered with scars, scars gained in service to our lives.
He has known pain. I will know pain, when he is dead.
Where is the lamb? Where is it, Father?
I imagine the knife swinging down, tearing clothes, skin, muscle.
I imagine the smell of the char, the burning flesh sloughing off his bones.
My wound will never scar. Could I do it? The question
Pierces my heart but stays the knife in trembling hands.
What now?
I cry out to Him again.
My son, my son,
My favored son.
His rabbit-quick eyes do not stray from my hands.
I cannot blame him.
Had the angel not held me—
My son rubs at the chafe on his wrists, red and raw,
Dreading the shrieks and silence of his mother,
We walk back with no words, the boy and I.
The deed’s undone, yet the unspeakable lingers.
