Thank You For The Venom

The saying “my heart was in my throat” never made sense to me. Not in any literal way. I recall as a child, hearing my mother say it in passing, telling some neighbour or other about the way I’d wandered in front of an oncoming car. I’d placed my tiny hand upon my chest and heaved a sigh.
My heart pulsed, dutifully, against my palm. Just as it should. Then, I’d chalked it up to those things parents say that you’re not meant to understand. Like the dark liquid that curled in the brown bottle at my father’s left hand, or the smear of cream-coloured paste my mother would slide across her throat and under her eyes, hiding bruises of passion beneath a mask that was half a shade removed from her usual fair complexion.

I’d never understood how your heart could beat anywhere but your chest. Until now. Until I stood with sweating palms and dry mouth, staring out at the crowd before me.
No. Not crowd. Congregation.

I slide two fingers into the dip between my virgin-white collar and the hollow of my sweat-drenched throat, and I feel my heart seize against my skin. It’s trying to escape, I think, before I can silence the thought. My heart is going to break free from my throat and lay gasping on the floor before me, drowning in its own crimson pool that stains my shoes.

But it doesn’t, of course. Though perhaps a miracle like that, something that was an un-denounceable act of God, would reverse the anxiety that twisted my gut.
I clear my throat, slipping my fingers away from my collar, willing my heart to return to the cavity it’s vacated. The uneasy sound reverberates off the arched, Holy walls, and I wince.

They’re still watching me. Hungry. Expectant. Psalm books open in their skyward hands, cupped as they wait to collect the blessings I will bestow upon them. But I have none. No word of any God flows from my lips, nor the strength to admonish my peers. For each transgression any one of these people has committed, I have committed twenty, with relish. If anyone were dying for anyone’s sins, I would have already been struck down, choking on the fumes of my own venom, spitting out poison that would sizzle and rot the immaculate marble floor. Perhaps, then, these people would be free of Judgement. No more Hail Mary nor Our Father. They would be free to live deliciously, callously, with rotted candy grins and forked serpent tongues.

I know, as only a Man of God ever could, that there is nothing worth prostrating yourself for. Nothing in Heaven, anyway. No cloud-formed Kingdom with sunshine tickling its edges, no martyred Son, awaiting with open arms and a forgiving smile. As I stand at my pulpit, suffocated by a mask stitched together with lies, I stare out at a sea of the future’s rotted meat. Some are closer than others, but all will disintegrate to ash and dirt. And there will be nothing, if there is not Hellfire. Eternal burning, or eternal darkness.
And I am supposed to tell them now, as they all sit in their Sunday Best, that there is a way to escape this inevitable end. That they are not cattle branded for brutal slaughter.
But I have seen the end. And it is brimstone and bone. It is crushing heat and choking fumes, gasped apologies that echo through your own brain, branded on your tongue, but remain otherwise unheard.

Even if I am able to drag myself through the motions of spilling false truths, if I can shield myself from the dazzle of brilliant grins of pure gratitude and love without being scorched by their light. Even surviving that, I will have to shove myself into a box like a coffin, back arched in some self-justified ecstasy as they pour their sins through the bars and into my cell. And then what? I tell them to punish themselves for contracting the illness of humanity. For lying, as I have lied, for lusting, as I have lusted, for stealing, as I sit with a heaving collection box at my feet. They will weep, or otherwise sit straight, a tremble of the voice the only thing to suggest shame. And they will whisper apologies like bullets that will pierce my skin, embedding in my flesh for me to keep as my bones crack to accommodate their weight. There is no Father to pluck them from me, like the removal of a splinter from a child’s foot. Within me their secrets sit, even as they leave the confessional, weight lifted from their shoulders with the promise of forgiveness, though they have done nothing to deserve it. What is screaming to the sky, when a wounded friend hears silence? True repentance is humility. Forgiveness is an exercise in audacity, in hubris.
And I am the most audacious of them all. Wringing my hands until they bleed, tinging Holy Water cherry blossom pink, sobs shaking my wretched form as I spit apologies and questions, desperate for direction.

Once I swore I heard the Voice, felt the guiding hand on my back. Was that the first of the lies I told? Am I the victim of my own delusion, as much as any of the others? Those who commit cruelties, wade through life covered in the slick weight of betrayal on their collars, on their shoes, embedded into their skin. They do so in my name, and in my name they are forgiven. But who can forgive me, if not other liars?
 

They are still sitting before me. The desire to escape is not enough to force time to evaporate, nor to allow my tongue to grow its own consciousness and spill lies that have nothing to do with me. I am the deceiver, and it is I who must speak.
I raise the Book to my face, shaking hand sliding down the page, trying to find a word I understand, any single phrase that makes sense to me. I look up in earnest, ready to admit that I’ve picked up some old translation, a text written in an ancient tongue too heavy for my mouth. But the congregation stares back at me, faces blank and cold, unforgiving above their Books, smiles wiped to make room for calculated judgement. Through their eyes, I see myself, finally, bathed in a light of absolute truth. The greedy stomach hanging over my belt, the sweat-slick face, hair matted to my forehead, the fear in my eyes, the tremble of my lips.
There is nothing I need tell them. They already know. I am not one of them. My misstep is fatal. I watch their hands curl to claw at my throat, the soft crack of bone shaking the floor beneath my shoes. Hatred like mottled blood glimmers in their eyes, emboldened by the burst of sunlight that cuts through the stained-glass above my head, dousing them all in sickly yellow and blue, in fiery red. And so I speak.

I do not look at the page, I know these psalms by heart. Crescendos of promises I have no intention of keeping, tales of an undying love I know has never existed. I spit them out, hands clenched on the pulpit until my bones ache with it, skin whitening as my knuckles crack. I taste blood on my tongue as it rises from my throat, my words lost in a bubbling wave of crimson venom so dark it’s almost black. It coats my teeth, rotting them from the inside, spilling out and sliding down my face. It burns where it touches my skin, but the words won’t stop. My collar blackens, clothes tearing and burning as I scream the words that are etched into my very bones. The crowd is pulsing, throbbing, becoming swollen and full of the fervour of my desperate lies. They watch me convulse, panting, sliding to the floor as I lose balance and slip on my own bitterness, feeling unspeakable pain as it shoots through my face, and yet still being unable to stop the steady pour of words. Of venom.

And then I am silenced. And they smile. One unanimous, skin-splitting grin that makes my back teeth ache with its sweetness. My flock tuck their books back into their pews, replace the hats neatly upon their heads, collect well-behaved children from their seats. Their bodies are engorged, reddened, seams bursting as wood creaks under their gigantic forms. A soft chatter rises as they leave, but they spare not even a glance for me. They have received the forgiveness they came for, stolen it as it beat in my chest by force. And they are saved. For I have saved them.

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