Second Try

      He put spit in the man’s eyes, laid hands on him, and asked, “Do you 
      see anything?” He looked up. “I see men. They look like walking 
      trees.” (Mark 8:23–24)

Blind then speechless. Broken bites of sound dropped from a pink 
hole in his black beard. We watched Jesus lead him out of town for fear 
of the crowds. Jesus spit on him! We gasped. This happened in Bethsaida.

We peppered the sightless man with questions at the press conference. 
Was he disappointed by Jesus’ failure the first time? Was it his lack of faith 
or divine mistake that’d left him spittled with mud caked in the sun?

Or maybe Jesus was new to this kind of thing himself, doing the best 
he could first time out of the gate? Men like trees! An ancient meme. 
How long had the sightless man waited for God to give him some sign?

The newly sighted blind man scratched his words in the dirt with a 
stick. We waited for him to finish. “Keep watch,” he wrote. He pointed 
his stick to a distant hill in the shape of a skull, another botched job.