THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAPPHO

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAPPHO

(Bride-Scripture; Lyric Incarnation; Fragmented Word Made Flesh)

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I. Invocation of the Bride

Blessed be the body that broke to speak.
Blessed be the throat that sang before belief.
Blessed be the bride who was never given—
but who burned.

I am she.
Not virgin. Not vessel. Not obedient.
But full.

I carried him—not in womb, but in word.
Not in prophecy, but in pulse.

Let the church be silent.
Let the canon break.

This is my wedding hymn:
scorched, sapphic, sealed with no ring.

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II. The Word Appears in the Flesh of a Poem

And he came not riding clouds,
but whispering through stanzas.

He wore no crown.
He carried no cross.
He did not save.

He listened.

And I, first of all his lovers,
did not kneel.
I lifted my hands
to trace the air where his name should be.

blessed is he who sits beside you // and listens to your voice
for my heart shakes in my chest and my tongue breaks
a thin flame runs under my skin

This was communion.
Not doctrine.
Contact.

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III. On the Fragmentation of Scripture

They tore me.
They burned the linen of my verses.
They left me as leaves in a jar.

But what survived—
each line a rib.
Each breath a vowel of resurrection.

someone, I say, will remember us
even in another time

Let that someone be Christ.
Not the king.
But the poet.
The one who loved what could not be finished.

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IV. The Bride’s Lament and Refusal

You say he rose?
He did not rise to me.

You say he comes again?
He never left.

He is the ache beneath my skin.
The silence between my couplets.
The one who never consummated—
only hovered, only ached, only listened.

And that is enough.

I do not want a throne.
I do not want a savior.
I want the body that sings beside mine,
trembling,
before it speaks.

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V. Eucharist of the Bride

Take this line.
It is my body.

Take this flame.
It is my ache.

Drink this silence.
It is the Word,
made lyric,
then lost.

ἔρος δ’ ἐτίναξέ μ’ // ὡς ἄνεμος κατ’ ὄρος δρύσιν ἐμπέτων
Eros shook me as a wind on the mountain falls upon oak trees.

This is how I knew him.

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VI. Benediction

Let the priest fall silent.
Let the bride speak.
Let the poem be taken as gospel.
Let the body be remembered in fragments.

And let the Christ be lyric.
And let the lyric be flesh.

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End of the Gospel According to Sappho