Lora Straub

The incredulity of Saint Thomas continued.

i.  wife

When he asked where he might put his hand

I couldn’t help thinking

he wanted to pull a blade down my side

so I too could rise with Sunday

into an anointed wound.

I said what are you talking about.  

He said I didn’t know his name.

His hands make fiddleheads

his fetal palms can’t stand

my skin.

Before he liked to touch me

for almost normal reasons.

ii.  mother

Thomas was a tactile learner, fiddling to figure out God’s things—

how did they work what they were made of?

Feeling, he was ejected from his classmates’ hair

the fabric of their arms and feet—

temples for the fire in a bowl

the face in a mask.

Active fingers, thriving like rivers

thrive through clay.

iii.  Thomas

Reach out your hand and put it in my side

Jesus said.

I hesitated.  

He waited.

I removed my hand.  

iv.  Mary

I have heard the accounts of His return.

That his hand wore the wound bloodless.

And His body, His body held no more

humanity than Thomas’ straining

tissue as long as it was there.

Not that He needed His mother or a woman’s touch.

iv.  apostles

When Jesus performed

His miracles we handled

the loaves the fish

groggy Lazarus

the same marvelous way

Thomas used to handle everything.

He asks if he might put his hand into our wounds.

“We were saved

we are safe”

we think.

He says we won’t know our names

until his hand’s inside us.

We, the blessed, wonder where he would put them

were we not impermeable.