sARAH lAW

Sarah Law lives in London and is an Associate Lecturer for the Open University. She has poems in The Windhover, St Katherine Review, America, Psaltery & Lyre, Presence, Soul-Lit, Heart of Flesh, Earth and Altar and elsewhere. Her latest collection, Thérèse: Poems is published by Paraclete Press. She edits Amethyst Review, an online journal for new writing engaging with the sacred.

mercy

Neither do I condemn you. He was writing with his finger on the ground. As deserted as she – they are alone in the desert, and he engraves the scene in sand. His love is a mandala; his mercy is for sinners. The woman stands in her flame of flesh; she leans like a tulip, flushed, sappy. His shoulder sag – an invisible grief. The judges have gone, dropping their laws like stones. My heart twists the way a child hears the door. He's here: adoration bubbles up. He has saved the princess in all her wounded glory. And who's to say it was not she who later graced his feet with her perfume and her tears? 

Neither does he condemn her. Their eyes meet, then her gaze drops down. He sweeps another curve into the dirt, letting their life-lines cross. 

Read more of Sarah’s work in Solum Journal Volume II.