By Brad Aaron Modlin

The ones who weren’t healed didn’t make it into
the Bible, but remained still as ponds the wind has
forgotten, seated as always 

on their straw mats, while across Jerusalem, a lucky one
stood for the first time and walked, her heels learning the
hot dirt. And that lucky 

woman, all she could do—feeling the ground as
it pushes back against our steps—was say,
“What, what, what.” And the man whose sight 

returned shouted, “Yellow!” like an old friend’s name. 
“Carry me home,” the unhealed instructed
their companions, 

and there, where everyone lingered in the dark as if
the curtains had no drawstrings, someone started to
say, “I’m so sorry,” but couldn’t get past I. 

And everyone drank hot water because there
was no tea and no one wanted to leave to buy
any, and no one wanted the water 

to end either, until it had to, because it had to, and the Bible left
out the friend who mentioned, too soon, returning the new
sandals the unhealed had bought 

prematurely. Then, while the room sat silent,
pretending never to have heard of shoes before, the
unhealed chewed a fingernail and thought for the
first time of many, “Maybe tomorrow. 

Maybe he will pass by and see me.” Finally,
remembering our hunger 

never stops, someone felt their way to the stove. And the
room ate flatbread unfamously, and halibut with lemon, and
what rose from the ground— 

a feast of more food than they’d expected to find there—
their wooden spoons scraping the bowls, the rising moon
scratching at the curtains.

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Brad Aaron Modlin is The Reynolds Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at University of Nebraska, Kearney. His book Everyone at This Party Has Two Names is available from Black Lawrence Press. His work has appeared in the 2025 Pushcart Prize Anthology; Brevity; Poetry Unbound; and The Slowdown. Also orchestral scores, Australian art galleries, and his grampa’s refrigerator. When overwhelmed, he dances.