My feet are strapped
to steely cold train tracks.

I am naked and shivering.

People come to bring me food
but I can’t eat.

The train won’t get here for six months;
I’ve long since stopped trying to free myself.

I reach down and the metal around my feet
which has been used to kill millions of others,
hold their memories in rust.

When night comes I get on my knees and pray.

To what, to whom?

TO Jesus Christ, the one in my heart,
not the one who casts people into hell
for finding a woman who isn’t their wife attractive.

Not the Jesus who says the only way
to the father is through him.

I pray to the Jesus
who washed the feet of his disciples.

I pray to the Jesus
who healed all who came to him.

But cold steel on my feet
has a way of keeping me from prayer.

The trees around me reach
out with barren fingers,
wishing they could rip
me away from the steel.

The shackles tell a story;
they tell a story of countless
people who stood on these same tracks.

Some people were here just a few weeks,
others- years before the train came.

six months.

What I can best hope for
is that the sleeping spirits
in the rusted clamps around my feet
come to life
as the two lights approach

and the lights turn into stars
lifting me to heavenly peace.
to the healing arms of Jesus.