So, here I am,  stuck on the cross

Paying the ultimate price for my wrong

Feeling my life seep slowly out of me

Looking down at my accusers, scorning me and my colleagues.

 

Well…

Colleague and one other man

Of  whom I know so little about

Of all the things I’ve heard,

It’s that he doesn’t deserve to be up here

 

Well, my colleague thinks otherwise

Since he’s been taunting and  mocking him,

“If you really are the Christ, then save us!” he says

“how can you say such, seeing we deserve to be here?” I answered.

 

However when I look at him

I felt an indescribable thing

So different from what I’ve felt since I made my first kill

 

I knew, I just knew he was going somewhere

Somewhere good.

So maybe, just maybe, I could go with him

So, I throw in me last bargaining chip

“Lord,  remember me when you come into your paradise”

 

Then he turned his eyes to me.

And I wondered, “how could someone in such amount of pain,

Much greater than the one I’m feeling, have such compassion?”

He says, ” I assure you,  today, you well be with me in paradise”

 

Then peace flooded my heart

I knew that for once in my wretched life

I’d finally done the right thing.

 

• Emenike Chinwendu (2017)

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