Pilate's Wife
April Bulmer
Too late when I groaned and the dream slipped from me, a black cord loose
round its wet throat. A noose Pontius cut like a midwife, his hands thin
as knives, and delivered to the festival. My breasts were jars of milk
curdled in the hot sun as the priests, the elders abandoned my dream.
Rattled their death charms.
They led Jesus away, his hips slender, but his belly swollen like a
woman's, bearing a weight and a skein of rope knotted to God. Slack to
grasp, though our hands are blades still wet with blood.
