The Art of Confession: At the Piscina: After Saturday 4:00 Mass
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The Art of Confession:
At the Piscina: After Saturday 4:00 Mass
"The
Phantom Pain, they call it,"
"Like
amputees get when they can still feel their missing limbs.”
John
Boyne
The
Heart’s Invisible Furies
“Did you know that bread was the first
eraser?”
We’d been cleaning the water
and wine cruets. The lips
of them, entirely crusted, crystal
clinking in the sink.
Somehow
they’d been shoved in the back
of the sacristy cabinet.
They lacked
for nothing but a bit
of care. But back
there? Pushed
in a hurry? Like
someone was
coming in and the spill of it
was taken up by the linens
stacked to attract it.
Clandestine.
Not a scratch on them that I saw
in this light. And
the small cross
topped stoppers, tall as my thumb.
They shhhhhed neatly into the throat
of their companion, kept
unpolished on purpose.
When he
touched me, I thought about
all that wine, the small dots
of it on the cloth on the altar.
And the magic of making those dots
disappear. A witch
the priest
had said of my mother, and always
wanted her to wash, iron, cross
embossed on top, his altar cloths.
He watched me set them out.
His plinth was broad.
Tell me,
what suffering God wanted
and I’ll take it all if another poor
slob (he called us all poor slobs)
would not be caught
in the palm of his hand, cupped
like he was
caught, no deeper than the fat
growing slowing on my rib-bones.
I think somehow that’s how martyrs are
made. His wrists were
quick
and stiff. The first
time I didn’t know.
It was like first communion: it stuck
to the roof of my mouth
for a hot second and then my tongue
touched it and it disappeared
like it was nothing and had never been.
Bread. Erased. Like he promised.
Like he
always promised.
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