The Host

The thing about Jesus is that he sounds like the kindest voice I know. I drive to work - the hour it takes me to get there sludging through the tangled city and then shoot like a rocket onto highways of sometimes black ice, or blinding snow, or summer heat hovering like ghosts above the soft asphalt- and Jesus sits beside me in the passenger seat. We hold hands. Threaded. He smiles a lot. Says good things. I drink coffee. He may wish he still had a body.

Once, when I was a kid, I asked someone why Jesus floated off into the clouds and didn't stay on earth forever, and they, the somebody, told me that he had left so that he could be nearer to us than bodies allowed. Closer than skin touching skin, or hands holding hands, and inside our souls. But still, there have been nights or mornings or long afternoons when all I've wanted to know is the shape of his hands, the cut of his collar bone.

There is a friend who prays for me and I swear I could mark the moments when those prayers hit heaven, because some days I stop and turn, and Jesus is talking to me in that kind, slow voice, filling up the empty spaces between my cells, rushing through my lungs and pushing against the blue veins in my wrists. It is a mystery. My heart only knows to lub-dub varying rhythms of fullness and desire in response.
Some days, all I know to say to that bodiless closeness is, "I miss you. I miss you."