John Findura
MY SON, THE STIGMATIC
My son had nightmares of his hands bleeding like Christ’s
He spent hours each day wiping non-existent blood from his crown
“I am like the Lady in that play, but I love Christ and don’t want to wash
Him from me,” he would say, “but I am scared”
I would reassure him that he did not have the stigmata,
even though I feared it as well, and I would tell him
that he had cut his hands on the thorn bush, that the wound
in his side was from falling off the playground slide
“You can love Jesus, but you don’t have to worry
about sharing His wounds,” I told him, though I had never
even brought him to church, had never told him much about God
and barely remembered to capitalize the pronouns of the Lord
I believed this, and I still do, but the horror of my poor child
telling me that he could see straight through the holes in his hands!
That he could somehow taste the dry air of Golgotha, remember
the scent of olive trees falling around, some stirring in his chest
I would stay up late at night and try to comfort him, weep with him,
pray with him, and try to understand a miracle that only he could see
until my wife would remind me that we do not have a son at all
