Chapter Text
Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
Mama always said they were buzzards. Buzzards that will pick you clean, girl. He seeks all that which he may devour, drink. Even the dirt was athirst. Drank up hot blood, sanguine sips, like some blasphemous offering — even though the rain never came, never. Sky of bronze and ground of iron.
The Lord will turn the rain of your country to dust and powder.
Sand turned to mud, clay, on bodies in that wretched desert. Bogged joints, eyelids, lips, like muck caked into cart spokes. Spit thickened, syrupy, until your tongue stuck — dryness like Hell, Hell clawed up to earth — and swallowing left your throat bruised like drooping, rotten fruit.
The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flock.
It’s what the good Father called you — his lambs to shepherd through the wickedness of the wicked. The Father took no part in the unfruitful works of darkness but instead exposed them. Crushed and hung them for all to see, chewed on like tendon meat, carrion under the wrathful sun. Swallowed them for his flock, digested the infections of evil and tumors of malice, those festering sores of villainy, because he loved you.
He did. He loved you so much, honey, he did —
“Look at me.”
The heavy press of a filthy and befouled thumb atop your tongue. Nickel and soot and rust. Astringent, sulfurous. The dig of fingers beneath the hook of your jawbone sought reunion through flesh and muscle.
“God wants—” The shifting of hips above you, your neck bent, led, shepherded, by your teeth until temple rested against thigh. A great, rattling breath from him — the kind the Lord sought fit sometimes to thunder over the painted mountains of the horizon. “God wants to forgive you.”
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all —
No confessional for the Father, he liked you just as you were — knelt in the humid, open yaw of his legs. Liked you supplicant at his feet for his good mercy.
Absolution, that's what he gave to the beloved.
Deliverance from the vileness of man. Salvation. Extrication.
“Yes, Father John.”
“Good girl.”
— unrighteousness.