Impatience for Imposters

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."

- John 20:24-25

You can walk through walls and do spirit acrobatics

you can come back from a day trip to death

you can haunt us in our daydreams and nightmares

but unless you walk wounded with oxblood scabs

unless you return as once rejected and propagandized

unless you hard code the memory of misery in skin

you are to us only a half-assed matinee magic show

a cheating MacGuffin plot device we groan at and walk out

a Disneyfied ending to a once dark and dense fairy tale

but come to us in your incarnate truth of suffering love

walk with us in our wounded warrior trauma and disease

and we will not only believe but cry my Lord and my God