Woman At The Well

By Arsh Das

In my shirt and jeans, wearing a tie, feeling like a man about to unwind.
The songs of the choir sound like angels singing, and priests talk as if a father is disciplining.
They read to me about the woman at the well, a truth that clayey me was unable to comprehend.

The seasons changed, and Autumn arrived, the soft childhood left, and the harsh teenage thrived.
Hormones raged a war on me, my body became my biggest enemy.
Mood swings and eyes following, a voice deep down shouting, judging, and growling.

I screamed silently, cried with a happy face, kept on saying, "I’m in the middle of the sea, and there’s no parting before me."
I made the bad decision, the thought that men can ever be trusted. He loved me so much so that he kicked me, hurt me, but it was fine as it was HIS way of showing love.

He touched me, he licked me, the sense of filth, my body was in deep guilt. The wolf in sheep's clothing showed his love for me, such love that consent wasn’t even needed.
Full of sorrow, when I went near the well of life, I got a flashback of the woman, the woman at the well.

In Samaria's heat, when she came to draw water from the well, with her heart heavy. 
Her past, a tapestry of shame and pain, a mirror of my life.
A stranger named Jesus looked deep into her soul, farther than anybody could ever see it.

I wonder, like she might have done too, who is this who knows me?
Who is this who loves me more than me? Why is unclean me loved by this stranger?
I got to know him, followed this stranger, my lover. Who needs no validation but I am validated through him.

He who loved me first, who knew no sin, who became sin for me. For a love so pure I live, love so great I cleave. I’m changed not because of something I did but because of what he did.