He puffs out his chest and takes up space for two,
long before the temple is destroyed.
Nobody has told him ‘no’ in a long time,
and nobody has ever taught him how to be humble.
This is where he stands, tending his animals,
spitting and swearing and squaring up to the pigs,
his face ballooning in redness, all the majesty
of colour given to him alone by God.
His masculinity is ripe with each slain animal,
domesticated and reared for sacrifice to please another,
another man, for whom pride is not a virtue.
Nobody has ever taught him how to be wrong,
and so he is never wrong, right up until the moment
when the stone is in his hand and the blood is on the stone
and the brother is in the blood and the history is given to the brother.
For the whole of time, there has been the trinity,
and with four alive, it was simple maths of which brother
must be cut down. The strong must **** out the kind,
and Cain will go down fighting one day,
but not today. Today, there is a victor, and a title,
and a promise ripped from the heart of the father
that nobody will hurt him the way he hurts.
It is the stone that cycles back,
like rainwater or bad luck or the static feeling
of something going very wrong.
These men do not lie, they deceive,
and Cain was granted protection,
until his house fell down
and his body, under the rubble,
for the very first time,
knew the communion
of what it is like to lose.
From a collection of poetry I wrote for a creative writing portfolio in second year of university, titled 'New Rugged Cross'.
