and as I prepare the lamb, it all comes back to me again this year…

The children sleep and in a still house I pour blood down the drain.
Scarlet drips from bowl’s edge and I’m struck
with images of the cutting of a throat, pools and reek of
of plasma, cells, platelets,
the appeal of peaceable vegetarianism

  And as I rub the marinate into the lamb, blood ponding on plate,
my hand massaging the meat,
fingers pressing out more blood,
I think of socially acceptable religion, inoffensive theology

and my nostrils fill with the stench of my sin,
and my beating heart hurts for the only God whose wild love
had him tear open a vein and do the repulsive,

become a lamb dragged to the slaughter
for without the outrageous shedding of blood

there is no cleansing of my gory mess.

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