I flicked my eyelids closed and open, the flecks
of starlight seeming to creep closer to
the cool earth underneath my body.
My heart quickened—streaks of light split the sky
until it cracked. A messenger descended,
his feet bending the grass in front of me,
his face melting my bones within me.
A son of the gods. My breath stopped.
My blood swirled in my own ears like the shouts
of the oncoming host from heaven—shrieking across the sky,
shooting stars so bright I saw spots.
The herald’s hair sparked and his voice stormed, a welling-up of thunder
until it reached my ears in a lightning strike of praise.
“A perfect lamb is born, in the city of the set-apart shepherd.
The Messiah, whom the seers longed to have lived to see.
Go to him, find him small and sleeping.”
The message delivered, the chorus shouted “Shalom!”
I shivered as the heat of their brightness retreated,
my heart calming itself, my hands calming my sheep.
I lifted my dirty hands in the dark and tried to remember
what little fingers felt like entwined among my own.
The silence around the stable stirred with whispers and
that night I held holiness in my hands.