The Lost Boys of Rizpah
- solidfoodpress
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
by Heather Cadenhead
After 2 Samuel 21:1-10
Two truths and a lie:
One, my sons are dead.
Two, you swore to protect us.
Three, I’m not angry about it.
My primal screams as peripheral
as the purring of caged hens—
soft sheets of water collapsing
against stone. I wanted the rain
to fall, to feel whatever dared touch
their bones. I felt closest to them
in bursts of hail—the hawks,
then, too cowardly to circle.
I was Ingrid Bergman,
staring down the male lead
while gas lights flickered.
I collected stones
for many schemes.
I threw them at snakes,
at jackals. I made beds
out of boulders, fanning
sackcloth over any point.
I went above and beyond
the pain you assigned.
Under the blitz of cutting rain,
I found it: gasping, half-drowned,
but somehow still pulsing with life.
Its silver peals echoed through
strongholds, a clanging revolt.
Was it courage or insolence?
On that, no one agreed.
I was prepared to be the third body
on that hill when you rode up
on a mule. Such violet nights
I nursed the bones now white
against your chest. It all seems
a fable now: the hours I held fast
to those wriggling bones, asking
how I’d ever lay them down.
