Simon of Cyrene went home that Friday evening
with blood, not his own, on his shirt
and splinters in his shoulder that his wife
worked out with a needle
while the children watched from the doorway.

He hadn’t planned on any of this,
had only come up from the south to sell his grain,
then buy some leather for new sandals.
But the soldiers grabbed him, the way they do,
and suddenly he was carrying wood
for a stranger who kept falling.

That night, he couldn’t eat his bread.
His hands kept remembering the weight,
how the rough beam bit into his neck,
how the condemned man looked at him
without gratitude, without pleading,
more like recognition, as if they were old friends
meeting by chance at the worst possible moment.

His wife asked him about the bloodstains.
He said a man died today, that’s all.
Later, washing his hands for the third time,
he wondered why they’d needed him at all.
Surely the Romans had their own methods,
their own people for this sort of thing.

Saturday, he stayed inside, told the boys he was tired
from the journey.
But really, he was thinking about that look,
the way the man had nodded slightly,
as if to say: This is how it happens,
ordinary people stumble into history
on their way to buy sandals.

Years later, Simon would tell the story
differently each time.
Sometimes he was chosen, sometimes
he volunteered, sometimes he barely remembered it at all. 

But his shoulder never forgot the weight.
On certain mornings, especially spring mornings
that arrived with sudden violence,
he would wake with the taste of someone else’s blood
in his mouth, and his wife would find him
standing in the doorway, looking toward Jerusalem,
rubbing that place where the wood had pressed,
as if he could still feel the splinters
working their way toward his heart.

Stephen White is a retired pastor and nonprofit executive. The author of several books — including Throwing the Baby Out with the Holy Water, Discipling Your Grandchildren, Tired of Saying “I’m Fine” and Misplaced Glory: Breaking the Spell of Pastor Worship — Stephen and his wife, Dawn, live in Scottsdale, Ariz.