The Rooster’s Call

Beneath the flickering lamps,
his shadow wavered,
a ghost of conviction
turned brittle under dread.
The firelight danced on unfamiliar faces,
their questions sharp,
their stares like stones
pressing him into silence.

“I do not know Him.”
Three times,

The words escaped,
hollow as footsteps on an empty road,
a dissonance he could not untangle.
Once, his voice had been the storm,
bold enough to walk on water—
but now, it faltered,
a reed bent by the slightest wind.

And the rooster crowed,
splintering the fragile night.
Each note struck him
like a mirror shattering in his chest,
the shards reflecting every vow broken,
every promise unkept.
He turned,
and there, across the courtyard,
His Rabbi stood.

Eyes met—not in accusation,
but in the stillness of knowing,
a silence that bore the gravity
of what love cannot undo.
No fire could warm him then;
no hand could steady his unravelling.
He fled,
his breath catching on the edges of shame,
his tears carving paths down his unmasked face.

Days passed,
the earth itself trembling with grief,
and still, the echo lingered:
“I do not know Him.”
But on the shore of morning,
where dawn spread its tender arms,
a voice arose—
not in thunder, but in the familiar hum
of nets brushing against the tide.

“Do you love Me?”
Three times, the question came,
not as reproach,
but as an invitation
to rebuild with fragile hands
what dread had undone.
And in the asking,
the fragments gathered—
not into what had been,
but into something new.

The fire on the shore burned,
its glow less a demand
and more a reminder:
Grace does not barter.
It gives, and gives again,
until the ashes are no longer ashes
but soil.

And I, like him, have faltered—
in words unspoken,
in truths denied
when the world’s scrutiny grew too unrelenting.
I have fled into foreign shadows,
searching for a silence
that could hide my name.
But He calls me still,
not in spite of my failing,
but through it,
making every wound a door,
every fracture a story that can be told.

For we who have known too many farewells,
who have worn masks to fit
where we were never meant to stay,
carry in us a gift—
to weave belonging
in the unlikeliest of places.
For even the rooster’s cry,
sharp and unyielding,
can become a hymn
when heard through the lens of grace.

The in-between is not an absence,
but a bridge.
We have stood in places
where no roots took hold,
yet found the strength to plant seeds
where others saw only rock.
We, who speak in borrowed tongues,
have learned that home
is not in the soil beneath our feet,
but in the love that finds us,
wherever we are.

Next: The Language We Lack

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