Lazarus and the Nazarene Man

Ana Escobar

The human heart is divided
into four chambers

I.

A room reposed,
the victor patient asleep on white linen.
White curtains, white linoleum, white walls, too white.
A vase of roses, 
red.
Brain cells will begin withering six minutes
after the heart ceases,
and we tip-toed through seven hundred seconds of a horizontal line,
seven hundred seconds of nails in skin, deep maroon—and then a steady movement, repose. Movement, repose.
Movement, repose.
A nurse wipes a damp, white handkerchief over
blood caked on bronze skin—warm,
too warm.

II.

The boy in the cafeteria spends each sunrise curled up
like a wave against the rugged shore,
inhaling a fresh indwelling of warm
saltwater; at first
penetrating, stripping away
the hardened bark of years, leaving the skin
raw
and red
and awfully naked.
That’s beautiful, I say.
I don’t stay to hear how
the saltwater flushes out his veins
and leaves them
white as sutures.
A rebirth.

III.

Water droplets pitter-patter gently
on the soft skin of her bare feet
and the concrete ledge around them.
A small breeze like kismet
or a kiss on the forehead.
She stares down at the top of the
luminous red cross, white trim
and imagines the rush of a short-cut
to the warm asphalt below; A small, broken body,
her white gown stained red, everywhere red,
violently red.
She takes the stairs. 

IV.

The nurse drags
heavy feet into the hospital chapel,
his corkscrew body too young
for such terrible aging.
Through a window you see
his veins begin to flow with the fervency
of a flock of red-faced warblers migrating for the warm country;
a home, transient and tangible.
His thoughts once video noise, or
the murmur of a busy street
are now crisp as a still Autumn lake
and there are tears he swore he’d never mean, but he means them.