To be looked at with such disgust. To be sneered at. That was a punishment in itself, but not the kind of punishment that cleansed.

In segregation at the state prison, as he’d been at county detention, because he’d been designated a special category of inmate because children were involved, and this would be known. Because there was no way to keep the charges against him not known. Because once you are arrested, your life is not your own.

Surrounded by “segregated” inmates like himself. Not all of them white, but yes, mostly white.

Yet nothing like himself.

They’d come to search his cell. Again.

Because he could not prevent them. Because there were many of them and only one of him.

In his cell there was nowhere to hide anything. (So you would think.) Yet with sneering faces they searched the cell.

And inside his lower body with furious gloved fingers, bringing him to his knees.

Yet they could not discover contraband. For it was nowhere here.

Where’re you hiding it, Earle?—fucker, we know you’re hiding something.

Their exultation in torturing him. Flushed faces, shining eyes, his screams are joyous to them.

In this place they were confining him, but the man who is free in his heart cannot be confined.

No prison, no segregated unit. No cell, no restraints, no straitjacket, no drugs forced down his throat or injected into his arteries to bind him.

Left him where he’d fallen, moaning on the filthy floor. A metal instrument (might’ve been a spoon) they’d shoved up inside him, into the most tender part of him, had been so forcibly removed, ravaged tissue was carried with it, slick with blood.

Thank you, Jesus. Washed clean in the blood of the Lamb, which is the most shame you can bear on this earth before you are annihilated.

On his knees alone on the night of Holy Saturday, observing the seven stations of the cross, the flagellant begins his discipline.

Each stroke of the rod against his bare back bringing expiation.

Crawling on his belly. Tongue extended. Makes himself pencil-thin, slithering like a snake.

Yet: a snake that can control its size.

From the crevice to the concrete.

Scraped raw the skin of his hands, bleeding.

On Strouts Mill Road, where the guardrail has been repaired.

Returning to his (ex)wife’s house, his house from which he’d been banished.

Fluidly he moves. He has the power to pass through walls. He has whipped himself into a froth of blood. He has whipped himself invisible.

(It has not happened yet—has it? He sees that it is waiting to happen.) And so this time it will happen differently. Jesus has escaped his enemies and will wander the world as free as he wishes, like any wild creature without the spell of a wrathful God upon him.