dirty/holy

their fingertips trace patterns up your sides and oh, you swear that you could just die right there and then if it would mean that they would continue touching you. you twist your fingers around their arms, then pull yourself away when you see bruises starting to form there. at night you turn into all mouths and dirty hands and shaking, always shaking. when did you become dirtied like this?

they’ll have had a bad day and you’ll massage their back and there’s a split second where you think you can feel wings poking from beneath the skin, then another, and another. their kisses are feather-light, and you’re reminded of lucifer and how his wings disintegrated during his plummet into hell, watching the plumage his father had crafted so carefully floating away above him and slowly becoming smaller. when did that love disappear?

at night you’re woken by their cries, the pain returning in their palms. once, you thought you and they were alike; but their pain didn’t come from blood and dirt and teeth like yours did, but rather trying to save, save, save, and though the calluses faded, the ache still remains. you shake them awake to try and comfort them as they pull their hands protectively against their chest, and you fantasize about driving nails through your own palms.

how do you become holy again?

on the train ride home your vision falls into greyscale. instead of people you see leather and velvet, warmth and wildfire. a tall figure with burnt skin and a bone-white smile and perfectly human eyes taps you on the shoulder. i can help you, he says. there’s nothing wrong with you, you justaren’t quite what you need to be yet.i can help you if you’ll just let it go, he says, and a soft hand caresses your cheek. i can help you fall into this like you’re meant to. you never thought the devil’s hands could be so soft.

repent, repent, repent. you sink into the word until it’s all that you can feel, and you hate it. repentance? it doesn’t exist; not for you, at least, you with your scabs and skin and mud. how could you ever be deserving of it? you, standing here at this crossroads?

but then they touch you, and you want to melt into them until all their purity and all their light and all their cleanliness wipes away your dirt and wear and blood. sometimes you’re afraid that when they do, there won’t be anything left of you; how could there be anything else to you but this?

fingers under your chin, under your jaw, tilting your head up to look them in the eye. a gentleness there that you could never hope to mimic, though you prayed to until praying disgusted you. their feather-light fingertips journeying along your broken collarbone to rest over your heart. for the first time in years, you pray, and ask that they can’t feel its beat beneath your flesh.

i can help you become holy again, they say. and you let them.