Questioned into Leaf

You waited, Christ, until the heart went cold,
until the little room under the ribs
had forgotten fire and called that forgetting peace,
until I could touch my own chest
and feel only winter keeping its accounts.

Then — not sooner —
Your wounded thumb
pressed one hard seed into the frost.

I say Cruel.
I say Why now, when the fields are stone,
when the years behind me lie like ash in the throat,
when even prayer has learned to go barefoot over ice
and not expect spring.

You do not answer.
You enter.

Now the chamber knocks against its lock.
Now every beat lifts water out of rock.
Now blood, that old obedient animal,
starts taking orders from a root I cannot see.

It hurts.
Let it be said.
Mercy is not mild in me.
It splits.
It pries the blue cold open.
It sends thin green witnesses
through all the rooms I sealed.

And every beat—
Lord, every beat—
is miracle and indictment:
blossom and gavel,
a live coal held to the ledger
of the years I offered You my sleep instead of my life.

Hear how they answer now,
those wasted years.
Not with speech.
With cracking.
With thaw.
With the old lost names of love
coming back hot in the mouth.

I accuse You still:
You waited
until there was nothing in me left to save
except the place that could be broken.

And You break it.
And the seed takes.
And the heart, questioned into leaf,
beats like a fist of light
against the dark I called my own.