McNeeley Ann

what you never hear about Eden was the water,
the flowing streams that promised life yet Eve,
that first woman, was never thirsty, nor bleeding.

yet, among the water, grew a tree. one of many in
that garden but long before that thick-skinned fruit
was plucked from it, stolen from it, it grew among the rivers.

later she sat, fruit stained like blood on her fingers, told
to go out, to go east, from that place of water, abundance,
yet in her immigration, that garden was a promise.

there would be another garden, a well, a new
river, and that woman’s shame, then hidden, naked,
immoral, became another’s glory, long ago.

it came from the body of another woman, whose faith
outshone the world’s view of her as unfaithful to her
promised husband. a scandalous choice for holiness.

her bleeding and groaning met with the smell of hay,
cattle – that promised gift given to Eve that her body,
her womanhood, would reclaim purpose that the holy might be humbled.

for when that child was born, another tree was already
growing, not to sprout new fruit or forbidden knowledge to
poison him but to crucify him. a second bleeding, second birth.

from Eve’s wrecked womanhood, that bodied reclamation grew.
in his humble form, he did not ask for waterfalls, oceans,
instead he walked all the way to another city, to a well.

hands of a carpenter, he crossed seas in fishermen’s boats,
all the way to that city where she was by the well. their
conversation forbidden by race, hate, but he asked her for a drink.

back in the garden, his father couldn’t face one like her,
the woman who ate the fruit because she was unholy. now here
his son stood at the well, facing her, because he was holy.

and he was like her, the woman with five husbands, human.
but there was no rejection, no sending out, nor isolation.
only a promise. at the well, he told that woman, first, who he was.

he was going to die for her, the whole world was going to be
wrecked so she could know his father’s glory. never again
would there be a need for human, built wells. the garden was returning.

she ran from the well, asking, can this be him? he who he
was promised to be. promised to never leave her thirsty again.
he had drunk of the jug in her hand, she had it left it there, and ran.

what eve left in eden, returning.
light, out of darkness, redeemed.
back to the garden,
once again, never thirsty.
come and drink.