out behind the church with our knees knocking on the old tire swing you offered me one of your brother’s cigarettes and told me you always lied during confession. and when i asked you why you shrugged and said because you didn’t want the priest up in your business like that. it was a sunday after service and our fingers were sticky with sugar from the donuts your mom brought every sabbath which we hated but ate anyway.
i fumbled the lighter and coughed my way through it and asked you if you can get drunk off communion wine and you said you’d tried and it was better than nothing. and i didn’t know how to tell you this, how it was fasting to keep myself from touching you, how last week you looked over at me during service and my hands started sweating.
how to tell someone this. how to turn and look at you from across the pews, the two of us clean in our patent leather shoes, and tell you that i was made sinner by you, that i lied too, lied to my parents and it was about you. how would i tell you this, how my nights had turned red with wanting you. how i was feverish at the thought of you, made holy when i touched you. you poked at a spider with the end of a stick and i asked you what you lied to the priest about today. you looked at me and all i wanted was that moment pasted on the palms of my hands so when i opened a bible it would always be there looking back at me.
and forgive me father for i have sinned, forgive me father for i am sin. you put your hand on my thigh and i couldn’t stop shaking.
it was a sunday the lord’s day and you took a drag from your cigarette and kissed me like a prayer and you tasted like sugar and ashes and communion wine and i was baptized in you, undone by you, made sacred by you, and how could i not be forgiven for this, how could this make me filthy when i finally felt clean, because you, you were holy water.
two years later, we saw each other at a party, both of us drunk off real liqueur, us girls hard and bright and chomping at the bit of it, life i mean, and you were kissing a boy in a hot tub and i could see sugar on you, i wondered if he could still taste our ashes on you.
sometimes i used to stand across from the church and picture the stained glass, wonder how something with stained in the name could be holy but the stain of you made me sin, sometimes i would stand and picture the service, the people, their heads bright and good and blue under the light, and me, clean turning red by your holy, holy lips.
