“The Scythe”

By Victoria Uhase

The breath of God moves through the air,
a pulse, a whisper,
a vibration carried on wind and skin;
it is not ours to steal.
No gavel, no rope, no needle or steel
can silence the music of mercy,
the rhythm of redemption woven into the sky.

No man holds the scythe,
no gavel carries the weight of divinity.
But still, they mark the hour,
Still, they tally the names.
Still, they sit in courtrooms, watching like the Romans did—
mouths slick with anticipation.
Still, they silence what was never theirs to unmake.

It clings to us,
the weight of justice forged in iron,
heavy in the hands of those who cast stones,
who tally crimes like beads on a rosary,
counting sins but never mercy.

This is the dreary manufacture of another murderer,
a dull accounting of eyes and teeth,
the cold machinery of retribution
turning breath into silence,
prayers into echoes.

Numbers on paper, names etched in stone,
echoes of voices
that will never again shake the earth
or call a name in love, in fear, in hope.
We write vengeance in ink that does not fade,
but grace was always meant to bleed.

How many hands were washed in doubt
before the stone was cast?
How many names were carved in error,
before the truth was gasped too late?
The warden carries the weight in his chest,
the priest holds it in trembling hands,
the witness cannot close his eyes at night—
and still, the dead do not return.

Yet we are pilgrims of hope,
not heralds of death.
We are the breath between prayers,
the light at the edges of grief—
made to break bread, not necks;
made to restore, not destroy.
Forgiveness hums beneath our skin,
woven into marrow and memory,
written in the breath of the Cross.
To free the captive is to free ourselves—
for none of us are beyond redemption’s touch.

They led Him to the place of the skull,
a sentence carved in wood and nails,
a king crowned in thorns,
a man condemned.
On either side, two thieves,
one spitting curses, the other whispering grace.

“Remember me,” he pleaded—
not for escape, but for mercy.
And mercy was given.

“Today, you will be with me in paradise.”

But men have long since crowned themselves as kings,
placing justice upon their own tongues,
sharpening it into a blade.
They do not whisper grace.
They do not offer paradise.
They carve judgment into flesh,
they grind forgiveness into dust and ash,
returning to the evil that blindfolded them before.

And when life itself is something to discard,
when mercy is drowned beneath iron,
when men appoint themselves executioners—
the devil does not need to knock,
for the door has been left wide open.