Are You Better When?

 I’m wringing old blood out of a bullet holed shirt since I’ve slowed the bleeding. Though the cloth might be warning sign enough, people still manage to see some kind of holy man.  My tongue is cut from all the times I bite it and my eyes are worn and old from fighting, yet some still come with accusations drawn. “I don’t think you give a damn about anyone, and I can’t actually believe that you’re even involved with something involving Christ.” She drew on me. I heard her coming though, as it seems I've got a sense about these things.  The shots might’ve hurt more if I’d even known her name, but these smaller caliber types aren’t much for a big old beast like me.  I shake her words like water from a bear fresh out of a stream. Have I become calloused to the voluminous strangers that approach and lob some critique of character having not known me? Perhaps I have. Perhaps not enough even.  She was up in arms because I didn’t spell her name right, or didn’t like the way I said hello to someone else, or more likely than not, wasn’t saying hello to her the way that she hoped.  I come with warning labels and I tell the skittish folks to be cautious, but yet they’re always mad when I don’t live up to some expectation that they’ve built. I never honor some contract that I didn’t sign. It’s like everyone knows some secret that I’m supposed to be more than a man, but a man is all I’m trying so hard to be.  Its as if I am a  scabbed over splinter in the body of Christ.  I know I am supposed to be something more holy. Are "We" loved better then? Are you loved better when you’re doing your best? Or are you crucified by strangers that think that everything you say and do should be different. I’ve been clothed in bullet holes and contemptabilities.  Both half dead and undying, I'm bound and bled by every word ever fired and every objection that’s ever left its mark.