My mother points this out like it's something lighthearted
by Christina Ellison
My mother points this out like it's something lighthearted
and now it’s all I can see down the halls of the Louvre:
little John the Baptist, playful and curly-haired, dressed
in camel and holding a staff he wouldn’t hold for
years to come. And I know how symbolism works,
grew up with the windows and paintings and statues
and crosses, but here is this young John in the painting
and the painting and the statue and the painting, fore-
shadowing his fate his future propheting his own propheting
made to already be who he’s going to be before his time, putting on
the suit of who he is not yet like a boy playing
house, playing school, playing baptiser. He’s old
while he’s young. Can you hear the executioner? They’re coming
for his head. But that’s too soon—he was just born of Elizabeth,
had only just leapt in her womb. Don’t make John grow.
Paint him as the boy, the playmate, the cousin. Let him be a child
before he finds the Jordan. Clothe him
in linen before he dons the camel hair. Let him break bread
before he scavenges for locusts. Give him time
before the dove descends.
Christina Ellison is a fiction and poetry writer from Texas. Born and raised north of Houston, she currently lives within the cornfields of Nebraska. She is a fiction editor for Iron Horse Literary Review and New American Press, and her work can be found in Blood+Honey, fifth wheel press, The Hyacinth Review, and others.
