Cross Dressing

If one searched within, not fingering for delectable notions deemed "spiritual" but simply felt with imagination what the body conceals beneath its ever-aging skin, one could fashion an iconic cross from a geometry of bones. Touch the sternum. Isolate a holy cross from the rib cage. If the desire to wear the cross dangling from your neck was yours, you need look no further. Indeed, the symbol of your faith is within.... Bones last longer than you do. You need not even crouch and sweat on an earthen floor, whittling wood under a scorching Nazareth sky to fashion naturally an artful cross to hang your hopes. Others fallen before you provide ample building blocks, sucked clean by worm and preserved in quiet dust, to string and nail together dull bleached bones to raise crosses of varying sizes. How loudly, stridently your construct proclaims your faith to the world is up to you.... If your bone cross is to hang down from your neck, size matters. If your cross will be worn outside your shirt or blouse, it can swing easily and unencumbered (though rocking and reeling on a subway ride may pose hazards to the eyesight of lucky soul next to you who'd grabbed the seat). Those who consign their symbol of faith to the warmth of their skin, providing proof only to folks around whom they trust when venturing shirtless, will tend to gather smaller bones, those once fingers, say, lying loose and scattered in caves and hillsides and dry riverbeds.... In either case, the cross of bones worn will do more than sing your whispered faith; they will mirror the old man skeleton within, that hard testament to your own brief wanderings, lovings, fightings, dawnings and evenings here in your cities and countries, a lasting narrative that you once traveled on through, scratched out a path on this planet whirling through cold dark space, and perhaps those wanderings were meaningful. Of course, the cross of your Christian faith is imbued with more, much more. Yes. But the old man will have the last laugh.