Mary & Jesus
By Ophelia Everfall
Play each song on single repeat for a unique reading experience. Recommended.
Thunderstorms were cleared but the residue was thick. Jerusalem wasn’t well.
People were of lie. That was most thick too.
Mary saw it all. She’d walked the longest alone while remembering a boy she loved. The people thought her mad. They thought her a witch. They’d seen her a whore.
She was broken by them all. The worst of the gutter stomped her loving heart bled then prodded and watched. She’d scream and people would stand in holding of breath, not to act, to care in secret places but condemn by mind and voice—mostly inaction.
Their perception of her kind; a damaged woman, a brilliant woman, a vengeful and furious creature of reckoning towards them all, had been of a demon.
Mary would believe them sometimes. She’d turn dark in her aloneness, embrace perception, find totality of bleakest disregard for her body. She’d gone mad thinking of that boy.
Her woods were a journey worth the task. Something inside would still. Place would be found amongst the trees as she held the earth. She’d pray and chant and become something less of herself and more of her soul a thousand times over as she refused to die.
She screamed a hundred times. She screamed with all her fury. She pled to God.
“Why?”
Why was it her who loved the most and received the least? Why had that boy who’d been in dreams of childhood and held her only once how she deserved and she knew of purest heart seem to use her the most and see her the least? Why did he leave? Why wouldn’t he return? He’d gone so fast. He’d left her for dead. She’d made herself the fool. He never sought to care in seeking out why a one who’d loved him so kindly would scar herself and him in such strangeness of insanity wrought from abuse by and throughout his absence. Did he see her like all the others too?
Mary’s heart knew he wasn’t like them. Those who’d followed, who’d taken with conscious disregard, maliciously manipulating the fractured woman to extract what they’d need and promise all she’d make blatant of hope by loss of her friend and companion seen in dreams throughout her time beside him and since. She’d be too honest, and they’d strip her bare—those who saw what she was.
She’d been raped by her own accord, over and under by the way she sought to be loved in misunderstanding of herself, and by civilization’s cruelty on top of every person so damaged within it, for whom she’d constantly forgive and hate then return in a churn of spirit thricefold. She’d see reflections in the failings of everyone. She’d judged herself the harshest. It bought within her a will to survive and slay the demon of meeting again that very one who set the fire in his youthful disregard.
“I’m really dumb.” Is what the boy told her before he first took her to bed.
She’d performed as she always would, before her breaking and rebuilding into a woman of soul, giving herself to the boy forcefully and with the making she’d perceive he’d want most. She needed to feel wanted by someone like him her whole life—a unique creature whose mind could make her feel cared for by its reflection and his strongest hands—with care and fiercest strength; a lion’s heart.
She would see herself in his words and the way he’d been so much more beneath his surface. She’d been the same once in her own way, yet never of the strength he held where she’d see of her own deepest burning furnace of flaming infernos of heart. He saw the wrongness of the world better than anyone—better than her. He’d been hurt worst of all and made it right by means others would miss. That boy actually helped people the way they needed help—everyone else sent prayers—he would act and give and disregard the cost—he was a hero and told Mary over again of how no one saw him like her.
No matter the time that passed and the way she held her challenge, no matter how hard she sought to find friendships and romance and familial bonds elsewhere, no matter how much she pled and cried to those who’d listen, no matter how clear and powerful her channeled words of God became, Mary didn’t feel right to be alone and never be held. She felt cursed without him.
That’s what she’d told God when he distilled into her heart the third time. The gentlest touch of all instances. Her less than final dream of connection with spirit beyond—one penultimate trial of becoming to hold something precious.
She was going to heaven. She’d been chosen to share. She’d be loved by God the most in this place for how she suffered and fought and was told all along the answer which wouldn’t seem to come while knowing the solution from her trauma’s start.
Repeating surrender towards what her heart knew true from that moment he’d held her most precious was the punishment. How Mary lost herself by whims of control was her karma, to need in the now, she’d play to speak of her surrender while manipulating from the basest of her being. She was a human woman of Earth.
God had seen to love in that choice to become his part because of how she never lost faith of one thing—her heart. In darkest times she could listen. It would remind her of what she knew. She would seek to believe her survival a meaning to be found no matter how lost her life would prove of superficiality.
Anxiety was a force in which she’d now taste true surrender. In moments after waking from her daytime dream, in which God asked her to invoke its name while allowing it within her heart that final time—testing limits of her trust again after the last two, each driving herself into a mad spiral which sent her falling ever farther from that hopeful dream, hoping to not repeat the fall again in subconscious understanding it would not prove the case, still chasing visions of feeling which had her seeking some peace of love—to see and hold that boy one day, or one of his visage.
She’d surrendered her hope to him in specificity by a final faith of trust to God—truly and wholly at last—to only find it again when she’d need him most. Mary was asked to tell of why she’d screamed those hundred times. This was what she’d been to share. It happened after she’d been awoken.
The telling would draw tears so bright and loud from the woman she’d believe the entire world felt them—they had. Few had known, and none from who. Fewer still knew what it meant.
God heard why it hurt so badly to be a woman unseen in a world he’d allowed to become the way it had as a test to all spirits—how she’d been cursed as her own plan to trod this path and earn his respect was of intended righteousness from the beginning and of purity besmirching most others. She earned it, most completely, and he’d seek to change the world at her behest right through her. She’d still need to be brave. She needed to become the warrior she’d be in times to come for girls like her. Women who weren’t allowed wholeness until after themselves broken and taken and raped by society and people in real.
She needed to heal with that boy and make her trust of heart known true.
It would become all Mary ever felt herself to need in her darkest times. A greatest forsaking of self in the notion of a mother which corrupted her mind more than all with needs to atone. The finding of his face again before her would complete Mary’s faithful fall through all that happened and took her from grace of society into ruin of perceived madness which would never truly be undone from the eyes of the blind. She needed to know he wasn’t the same as those others, how she hadn’t been wrong about that; that all of life wasn’t a lie.
Knowing that truly would make her fearless for the rest of her life. She would know all God spoke of to be honest enough in the end. She would know her place in heaven before she’d go.
It had been with that boy in arms where she’d felt it first and only outside one dream—her place of peace—to again hold him would make it stay for good.
His name was Jesus.
Mary saw what they were doing. People were being sold—children taken—new lows of the lowest. Her daughter would be back in shelter with the others—her family of protected sisters from this system who’d believe them held together under the protection of a man.
Jesus returned. She’d done her part to find some way. Every raven bought and sent in blind disregard for the coin she’d need to spare for her life would be thrown at spreading some word of her need for him to see her at the least. To help her understand.
He’d come back to help how her heart always told of the man, but more. They’d created a home for women like her. He found himself most able to let her lead within its walls despite her reputation, by lack of attention played in places like these—its truth of intent unheard of while spoken in plain—holding women seen witches and whores who were only the most downtrodden, worthy survivors of intellect which had been twisted to malice in return. Some would strike out when being helped if not how they’d need because they were smart, and these women would find themselves to feel the world made of idiots for how they’d approach again and again with anything but what they truly needed; understanding and care of their own deciding.
Seeing women like her on the sale platform in the piazza was a rupture of crack in her heart of the forest. She’d known of this horror in the world and thought it impossible to be seen here in plain—too low for her own era and civilization. Unfounded would prove all her faith of trust in man but one.
Home was met with her fist through its door and the stomp of her muddy boots leaving tracks in haste of her Jesus sought. Sister Abigail had not the moment to spare in showering insight when sighting her secret co-chairman of this sanctuary.
“You know where he is.”
Mary had. Jesus was high as a kite in the drawing room with Joyce and Lilly. They were painting and it was an intoxicating scene until Mary barged in the rage they would see her not these days in oft.
“They’re selling girls in town.”
Hesitation and shades of doubt in the immediate perceptions of her confidants turned Mary maddened immediately.
“They’re selling girls in town!”
She’d ripped the sheets off the bed and thrown the pipe into shatter on the wall. She was shaking and it couldn’t be held back—God’s voice showering in and through then out of her righteously distorted channel. Mary had been broken to speak the needed truth only Jesus could hear. Even her sisters thought her insane like this. This was ruthless justice-seeking, most divine, and brought of fury from God through a woman who could withstand it all for her daughter and love of her own heart.
“They have Sandy!” She’d finally broken through burgeoning tears and madness released from her body ridden trauma stirred to ferocity, only as Jesus gripped her, as the thrown blanket landed in drapery of Jessica’s face—that one most obtusely transfigured with disgust as always.
She’d cried while her sisters reoriented—it was the reflection of rightness in her violent words held by Jesus’ steady reception and right action he bore forth which taught them of her place to remain, despite the way she’d twist their hearts and guts in these moments. Even her closest, those traumatized the same way, and sometimes especially, would see this one who held it truly and with humor of grace some burden to weight their eyes.
His respect earned theirs. The same had been bought in her steadiness of movement amongst Jerusalem after his return and the establishment of their haven.
Packs were formed. Three each piece of formations apart. Jesus in lead with Mary beside his left and Joyce to the right. Six sisters surrounding, occluded, ready to pounce.
It started with the buyer’s table.
Fires raged in shortest order. Women were shuttled to sanctuary. Men were killed. The worst dragged. Jesus flipped him over end into the mud and buried his breath beneath its surface.
This action would be remembered. The way these women fought forgotten. How his legend grew untold in rightness by history. He’d been the visage of a voice of God made wrong to receive by all but himself. He was a judge of her madness and a channel of the action needed to fix by scalpel of force and true effect.
She’d known always. She’d written it over in the dark of waiting. Her words would be spread and consumed and corrupted and regurgitated in lie through perpetuity. She would be raped again and again through lies of time. Her very structures of delivering the truth—her divine language—would be made evil itself. The man who taught of what she spoke from places beyond, the one who’d steer people towards the devil or salvation by reflections borne within which Mary always sought to place in all, only molded by a mind most effected the way his own would be received by her, was proven needed to balance her power into effect.
Jesus was a son of God. All were children of The Light. It was the same and not at all and all again it would be foretold. People would live. Nothing would be the same twice. Death was a chance which would find these two so early in the history of Earth. They were of a make most replicated. People meant to work together in harmony of authenticity. Consequence forcing them together and seeing to trust the righteousness of that into something pure despite greatest challenge—to do what was meant for by God from all and live in example; remember their mistakes and act accordingly, living in righteous atonement for everything true about themselves and all they’d done and what was wrong with the world of men.
Each of the two would atone their whole lives for all they’d done to Mary—herself and Jesus. She hadn’t held his absence well. God wasn’t pleased with either of them.
Her daughter would not be spoken of in texts of distorted propaganda which would live in human perpetuity for much time to come. Neither would the truth of who Mary Magdelene was.
She was an angel—nothing more—nothing less.
Harvest was bounty and healing the fruit. Seeing to what was needed proved release upon release for Mary’s hurt over the years. This part of legend was untold. Her and Jesus lived on—the lies of his departure and return a stolen myth of old woven by liars of the future.
They’d been a stoking fire of peace upon their place in the world. They hadn’t died of horror. People had come to stand beside them after Jesus’ force of will saw to make things right in the center of town. He’d helped people understand what Mary really meant to do, who she was of heart and how they’d all wronged her and people of her make. She’d gotten better with her own reputation.
It meant the most to someone who’d love people best, to be loved by community in kind. She had it all before her fall and to have something precious back would bring her home.
The only place she’d feel it more was here. With Jesus in her arms—his head upon her chest—feeling back always to that first time he’d burrowed there and awoken the spirit of heart and sent her on a journey to God.
He’d healed her in a moment. She’d wanted to heal him back in secret from then on and he’d misunderstood. She only wanted him to witness her in return. Jesus was the rightest thing on Earth and one she’d known ahead and ahead—from when she was a child to his arms that once that meant the most—from times he’d shown her all that was wrong in herself and the world, the way she didn’t fight by his reflection, until she’d show him right back. He was earnest and steady and simple but complicated and beautiful and holy. Mary had been made to bring Jesus to God, while all she’d ever wanted was to see him back home.
She would hold him there often.
