Graveyard Tales

Photo by lonely blue on Unsplash

A Poem by Christel Jeffs

When the thorn is your body,

the very sinew and skin

that holds you—

When you long to be away

with the One your heart knows well,

the last place you want to be is here.

You sit across from me

with a pillow crushed to your chest,

soft clay mashed between your palms,

cuts glistening on your wrists.

A painful swallow–

clock hands tiptoe around the silence.

I know death stories,

the ones that belong in graveyards but

plunder life like locusts.

You know them, too.

The wounding in me

meets the wounding in you

and the wounding of Christ

is seen in our dying selves.

Your chronic, trauma-tipped pain

flows without censure,

bleeds without a suture to heal it.

Let the words break out.

Let them pour on the ground

where bones are littered,

brittle and void,

where stories resurrect and

graveyard tales

become

garden parables.

Christel Jeffs is, first and foremost, a beloved daughter of God – the one that Jesus loves. Beyond that she is a writer, editor, and counselor. She lives in Northland, New Zealand, the place which serves as the backdrop for her debut novel, The Gumdigger’s Wife (2016). Her poetry has also featured in several Fast Fibres Poetry anthologies and the literary journal The Way Back to Ourselves. She loves to help others re-write their stories through her counselling work while continuing to author her own - guided by the greatest Storyteller of all.