I hear confessions on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
The sins are: theft, vanity, sloth, envy, wrath. And lust. Lust most frequently, because lust is the appetite that fills whatever space is available. The farmer who looked too long at the miller’s wife. The widow who touches herself at night. The young couple whose haystack testimony carries the bright shame of people who have discovered that the body and theology occupy different countries.
I absolve. Ego te absolvo. The sin walks out, and the sinner walks out lighter; the weight redistributed from the soul to the priest who absorbed it through the screen.
I carry the weight home. I descended the stairs. Ruby eyes, fawn ears, the spotted skin in the lamplight. The parish’s wanting added to my own.
I am fucking her with the village’s sins in my body.
The farmer’s looking becomes my looking. The widow’s touching becomes my touching. The sins I absolve upstairs become the sins I commit downstairs. The priest as a gutter. The rain flowing through me into the ground.
She receives everything.
