The Potter

(Following Kahlil Gibran's lead, my own "witness" to the woman accused of adultery and brought to Jesus.)

I was at my pots, breathing the morning's dust in the market when they broke in upon the day's bustling rhythms and stood her, half-naked, in front of him. He sat with tea amidst a motley group of companions. I'd heard laughter through the morning and cries of awakening, interjection, dispute, and...song. I'd seen him kneel in the white limestone dust and draw with his finger, maps of worlds only guessed at by our stale hearts. This was, mind, a hundred feet away, through reckless din, so my mind filled in the words not heard, the maps not seen. My story of him might be oceans away from what he was dreaming into their swollen hearts.

My body quickened at sight of her - what man's body would not? She was known to us all, not by physical touch, but by the envious touch of tongues upon our imaginations. To see her in the morning's light, wreathed by sun dappled through thatch, I'm sorry, there was nothing more for me to do but desire what I had only guessed - a thigh split the red of her skirt, the round of a breast through the gauze of her chemise, rough hands on her olive arms. Blood at the corner of her mouth, she stood in front of him a pillar of stone, sculpted shame.

Rude voices followed rude hands, insistent. Beasts of the air circled with their stones, called to sport by the morning's cries. I'd been lost enough in years past to be the first with my bilious cairn, in the open ranks, crying down vengeance upon those prized for their dissipation, their sacrifice to our blood's thirst.

I cannot say for sure if, under different circumstances, I would not have reached again. My eyes and heart strained for the glimpses of her body I was afforded. In the heat of my envy, I could just as easily have assented as I had at other times.

But, I watched him.

Watched as he finished the point he was making to his companions.

As he listened to the foul cries of her accusers, not once blanching from their ferocity. As he sought out, in fact, all that they might say, pushing their points along to the very edge of do I have this right, is this what you are saying?

As he stood and gently staunched the blood at the corner of her mouth. Took cloth from behind him and wrapped it round her; placed his rough palm upon her brow.

Rough? How do I know it was rough?

I felt it upon my own brow. Felt its heat, felt an insistence that coursed down through the muscles of my face, my neck, and into the wayward briars of my heart.

I felt the stone of our bodies fall away.

You can imagine. Venomous howls.

Spit upon the table. Spit upon him.

He stood and absorbed it all.

I cannot vouch for the words from where I stood, but I feel as if he said: "Are we finished here?"

They were finished. But, she was not. She sat with him.

And I was crossing the distance.