Forgive me father, for I have sinned

I remember praying, I remember praying and pleading and offering up every part of myself in exchange for feeling whole again. My prayers were made from decomposing meat, saltwater baptisms and key lime pie – because hey, I thought everyone liked pie – but in the end, Church that morning was just a dense fog, and I once again felt the piping hot biting sort of guilt coiling up inside my gut, the promise of sin, of falling in the very best of ways.

I’m so worthless, eating up his gaze like this, acting like he’s the only thing that gives me a sense of any sort of self respect. I don’t really care though, not when he’s looking at me like this. I know that if he offers me anything at all I won’t be able to resist. I know it from the look in his eyes to the way his mouth moves soundlessly as he fidgets for something else to say. He’s a miracle wrapped in fairy dust and fuck if I’m not ready to snort all of him up and become a dream.

For some reason he now has a nosebleed, and its so beautiful, that shade of red, the same red that fills his cheeks and flushes his skin so burning hot and bright. I want to paint everything with that colour. I know it would be my favourite colour to use, but I cannot sacrifice him like that, no matter how pretty the colour that runs through his veins. He is a supernova, made of stars and heat and damage.

I’d gone to church again this morning with my father, listened to his sermons and drank up the words of the Lord. I sat and listened to my father promise sin to those who didn’t follow. I listened to my heart die just a little bit more inside. He screamed at us for a long time, till it felt like I was leaking from the ears. I see him covered in blood – it seeps down into the Bible he’s holding. His hair is wild underneath his halo. The background is in flames. 

The lights are a strange kind of tired ivory, and if you look close enough, the beautiful dust motes floating through the air are just tiny particles of dead flesh, and when I meet his eyes I know that he has had to leave his sanctuary too, and so I feel drawn to him, to his anger and his unholiness, and I know that he feels wrong somehow, and I know that both of us are blasphemous, but finding out that I wasn’t alone is a miracle if there ever was one, and even though I muddy up my mind and do things that God has never been fond of, I never want to give the Devil the chance to crawl all up inside of me, but then I go and kiss him like he is a dying star and I am making one last wish and in this moment he is mine to consume, and he is hot and breathing against my neck, saying my name like a prayer and I feel something looming over us – the shadow is black and sticky like tar – I think you could drown in it.

The younger boy is staring up at me, considering, head tilted at a rigid angle. 

“I want you to hurt me,” he says. 

I hesitate. I am thinking of the hollowness in my chest, in my thoughts, feeling my breathing like a moth under a glass. Like a boy in the sea, drowning.

But then I feel my divine rage uncurl. There is beautiful red leaking from his mouth and from his eyes. There’s skin and there’s blood, and the madness is blinding me, clouding my brain, and I’m throwing punches like the sky throws stars. Maybe this is real love though. The kind of love that goes to any length to prove itself. 

I rest my forehead against his now bloody face and inhale slowly. His breath hitches in his chest and he curses out a string of expletives and clutches at my ripped t-shirt for something to hold onto. He seems so relieved, so grateful. 

I dug the grave for our secrets. I remember it. It was shallow and unfinished and I am terrified when I look at it.

Later that night, I take my rosary into my hand and clutch it so tight that it hurts.  ”Forgive me father, for I have sinned.”