Tall windows arch over him


    Stained glass Saints reflecting the glare of candles


    Like a thousand glowing eyes.


    Mother’s pearl white nails clutch his collar


    Young knees buckling


    Small feet stumbling to keep up


    Marching down the aisle


    Voice cold as steel, cutting like scissors, she


    Demands he pray for forgiveness


    Fear winds up with longing,


    Twisted, layered, twisted again and again,


    Knotted threads becoming rope.


    He kneels at the altar


    Prays


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    Begs


    His words repent to the divine


    But his heart means it for his mother


    If the Saints could forgive him, perhaps she could too


    The Vicar preaches the Saints'' love like a mockingbird mimicking a call


    The boy''s attention slides away


    Floats up into the ribs of the vaulted ceiling


    When he sees those looming Saints


    Casting their judgment from above


    Urchin spines crawl up his throat


    He learns this must be what love means,


    But he never feels the bliss


    That the Vicar''s empty sermons promise.


    Past his third decade


    He runs to the chapel again


    Throat hoarse with scabs of angered words


    Cheek stinging where his wife’s hand


    Met it minutes ago


    Where it met him so many nights before


    Crumpling before the altar


    Wooden floorboards bite his knees


    The Saints greet his pleas for mercy with wordless contempt


    The silence burns


    Years of guilt crumble around him


    Like pillars of ancient ruins


    An arrow of clarity pierces his skull


    The Saints will never answer


    They were never there to begin with.


    A dark cloak drapes him in loneliness, an abyssal fear so vast


    and foreign


    and dreadful


    He doesn’t know


    Whose forgiveness


    He’s really seeking.