Hint: it's about Jesus. I was going to call it "Onward to Golgotha," but it looks like someone took that already...
Way of Grief
The martyr struggles slowly up the
cobblestone road, the jeers of the vengeful and the fearful ringing in his
ears. The weight on his shoulders is
heavy, and the Levantine sun is hot against the loose flesh of his lacerated
back. The harsh, jeering crowd begins to
pelt this inverted King with spare rocks, silently encouraged on by the
arrogant, corrupt elders who look imperiously down the Via as their own kind
are flogged and mortified, always in the pay of their Latinate oppressors. Behind him are the legions, trained, cold,
dispassionate, their whips not a punishment so much as incentive for
motion. But the hill is long, and his
load is great. The strength of the
martyr falters as a rock grazes his head, pushing the halo of thorns he wears
into the yielding flesh of his skull, and he stumbles to the rock-smooth ground. The soldiers continue their beating, profanely
urging him to get up and shoulder his load but a little further to the hill of
skulls. As he turns his head up to the
hot blue sky in silent desperation, he notices a shape in the crowd. It is a young woman, a Jewess as he is a Jew,
dressed entirely in solemn funerary regalia yet with an encouraging stare. Beneath her tunic is the slight bulge of
conception, the slightest hint at the screaming circumcised generation to
come. He sees her. She sees him.
He knows she carries their child.
He prays God will vindicate him, doubting that, when the blood in his
veins throttles his lungs at last, He will.
As the soldiers retrain their whips, the martyr shoulders his wooden
cross yet again and marches steadfastly to the place where the skulls lie.
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