Young Messiah

Who baptizes the child
who has killed?

His fingers still tremble,
cold from a weapon
he does not understand.

The steel is silent in his hand,
and the blood on his skin
carries no guilt -
only birth,
a promise without form.

The young Messiah died last night,
upside down,
his heart full,
spilled into the darkness
like milk
slowly pouring from a bowl -
a tender movement
no one stops.

Angels descended with him,
their wings still,
as if they knew
they would never fly again.

And the soldiers followed,
their boots still warm from earth,
their mouths open -
but without a voice,

only the lingering presence
of a war
that does not end,
but waits.

Small deaths drift down
like dust in sunlight -

no silence,
no fear,
but space
between every breath,
a waiting room of light.

The children stand in lines,
not before a closed heaven.

They wait,
eyes open,
not in ignorance,
but with the knowing
that something within them
will break open -
not from outside,
but from within.

Who baptizes the child
whose trembling hands
carried blood?

Who teaches him
that this blood
carries not only guilt,
but also life?

His tears will come,
not from sorrow,
but from understanding.

Not everything that dies
disappears -

what lives
lives through offering.

And his knees bend,
not from guilt,
but from creation.

The Messiah did not die
to save the child -

no, the Messiah died
to show
how life spreads
like fire spreads
through everything it touches.

And the child lives now,
as he always will live.

The child lives,
and in his blood
the world waits,
kneeling,
for that moment
in which he will understand:

he was born
not only to live,
but to create.

And he creates,
not from choice,
but from necessity -
as heaven creates,
in silence.