The Cross in the Graffiti
The first time Marcus noticed the cross, he was just trying to get to school without getting jumped.
He walked the long way, past the broken swings in the housing complex, down the alley that smelled of rot and gasoline, past the dumpster that always hummed with flies. But that morning, something different caught his eye on the concrete wall of the underpass—bright spray paint scrawled over older layers of grime. Amid tags and gang symbols, a rough but striking image stood out: a crude wooden cross, bleeding red.
He slowed. The alley was never quiet, but right then, it seemed like even the wind was holding its breath.
The cross wasn’t neat. It was jagged, uneven, slashed in with angry strokes. Yet it stopped Marcus like a shout in the dark. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he was religious. Not anymore. Not since Mama died.
But there it was.
A cross, bleeding.
He walked on, head low, but that image stayed with him.
That night, after his little sister Nia finally fell asleep, he sat on the edge of his bed, replaying the shape of that cross in his mind. Something about it stirred a memory—Sunday mornings and starch-stiff collars, Mama humming low in the kitchen, her hands rough but warm as she buttoned his shirt. “Jesus sees, even when no one else does,” she’d say.
But Jesus hadn’t seen her, had He?
Marcus clenched his fists. It had been two years since the hospital. Since the sound of that monitor flatlining. Since the long, numb ride back home with just silence and Nia’s small hand in his. No more songs. No more prayer.
Only anger now. And survival.
Still, something in that cross made his chest ache.
He saw it again the next morning. And the morning after that.
The cross hadn’t faded.
It was as if it had been burned into the wall, or maybe into him.
One day he found an old Sharpie in his backpack, and without thinking, he added three words beneath the cross: “Still watching me?”
He didn’t expect a reply.
But the next morning, someone had written back: “Yes.”
He stood there, heart thudding.
It could have been anyone. A joke. A kid messing around. But something about the handwriting was careful, almost reverent. Not like the messy tags sprayed around it.
For the first time in a long time, Marcus felt something besides rage. A quiet thrum. Like when Mama used to rest her hand over his heart and say, “You’re never really alone.”
Days passed.
More words showed up.
“Why do you care?” he scrawled.
The next morning: “Because you do.”
Marcus stared at it for a long time. Then looked around. No one.
At school, everything was the same—jerks in the hallway, teachers too tired to notice. But that cross kept pulling him back.
It became a ritual.
Every morning he’d stop and look.
Some days he wrote questions. Some days he just stared.
He didn’t know who was answering, but the words kept coming.
“He died for the broken.”
“You are not forgotten.”
“Even now, still loved.”
There were no sermons. Just small, steady whispers on a wall of decay.
One rainy morning, Marcus stood in front of the graffiti longer than usual. His hoodie clung to his back. Nia had cried all night. Rent was overdue. His part-time job barely covered groceries. And now someone at school had accused him of stealing a phone.
He felt like drowning.
With the Sharpie trembling in his hand, he wrote, “I don’t want to keep going.”
It stayed there all day.
But when he returned after school, a new line had joined his:
“Then lean on Me.”
The cross seemed brighter in the fading light, like the red paint was still wet.
Something inside him cracked.
He slid down the wall and sat in the wet, the weight in his chest finally breaking loose. He didn’t sob, not like a kid. Just breathed—deep, slow, ragged breaths—as if someone had handed him air again.
He didn’t know who was on the other end of that wall.
But he started to believe that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t just a person.
Maybe Someone was actually answering.
Over the weeks, others started leaving notes.
Small phrases. Names. Pleas.
“Help me, Jesus.”
“Forgive me, Mom.”
“Still trying.”
And still, beneath it all, the cross bled quietly.
It became something more than graffiti. It became sacred.
Marcus began cleaning around the wall. Brushing away trash. Wiping off crude tags. One day, he brought a candle and lit it at the base. Just once. Just to see.
It didn’t feel dumb.
It felt like home.
He found Nia staring at the cross one afternoon, her small fingers tracing the red lines.
“Did you draw this?” she asked.
“No,” Marcus said quietly. “But I think He did.”
She didn’t ask who. She just nodded like she understood.
Months passed. Marcus didn’t stop struggling. But he stopped doing it alone.
When he couldn’t sleep, he’d go sit by the cross.
When he messed up, he’d write it down and leave it there.
Sometimes the answers came. Sometimes they didn’t.
But the silence no longer felt empty.
It felt full.
Full of Presence.
One night, a man from the neighborhood came down the alley with a bucket of white paint.
“City says this wall’s gotta be cleaned,” he muttered. “Graffiti removal.”
Marcus stepped between him and the cross.
“Please,” he said, voice low. “Can’t this one stay?”
The man looked at the wall.
At the cross.
At the layers of writing around it.
And then he shook his head slowly.
“Ain’t the worst thing I’ve seen on these walls,” he murmured. “Maybe… maybe it should stay.”
He walked away.
The cross remained.
Years later, the city painted new murals over the underpass—bright and polished and sponsored.
But on one stretch of bare concrete, someone quietly repainted the cross.
This time with care.
No more crude lines. Just simple, stark wood. No blood. Just a crown of thorns at the top.
And at the bottom, written small in permanent ink:
“He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities… and by His wounds we are healed.”
Isaiah 53:5.
Marcus visits sometimes.
Not every day.
But enough.
He brings Nia, now in high school. Sometimes he sees others stopping by too.
He doesn’t know who started the answers.
But he knows Who finished them.
And when he passes the alley, he doesn’t feel fear anymore.
Only something like peace.
The kind that doesn’t make sense.
The kind that stays.