Saint (Priest, #3)

by Sierra Simone

pressure coming from the cage I’d hurriedly locked around myself before I came here.

oh

How will I make it through another year of missing him? Through forty more?

thousands and thousands.

underestimate babe

the love of my life

still engaged bro?

“This,” he says, gesturing around to the cottage that has held so many of my best and worst moments, “is a waste of privilege. A waste of a life. You have blown a hole in the hearts of everyone who loved you for absolutely fucking nothing,

goddamn

Doesn’t Jamie know they sell bread at the store???

What if I went and found him right now

But I don’t. I don’t say any of those things because rain has gathered in the small dent above his upper lip, making a little dish out of his philtrum, and suddenly nothing else matters, nothing at all. I take a step closer to him, my eyes on his mouth.

no pause babe i want ypu to talk

THREE WEEKS LATER

did you email pr anything or send that apology tho bc i kinda think u should dude

To apologize for the hermitage, and also to promise that it will never happen again, and also to ask if he minds saying more things about how he misses me when we’re apart?

How many white men. It was a boys’ club, and it was run like one.”

IS THAT. OT True ABOUT THE GIDDAMN MONASTRY

“I always think about them.”

now ask him about jamie

“If we were still together,” he says quickly, “and we were here in these ruins, what kind of game do you think we’d play?”

DONT DO THAT

Even if my guilt is threaded through with so much desire that it doesn’t feel like guilt at all

if my chastity is falling apart, then so is my obedience, so is my honesty. So is my devotion to God.

I can’t live without prayers and ordered days and quiet cloisters. I know because I tried once.

“So explain celibacy to me then,”

well pause how can he explain it

a mind-breaking combination

my bad for skimming but where are they?

It’s because sex and prayer fit each other so well that splitting them apart feels like the real sin.

IRELAND

No!!!

But what’s my alternative? Not find time with Elijah this week? During our last week together? Impossible.

is no better.

I mean that didn’t sound awful

Maybe I’ll find God in every hill I see for the rest of my life.

I can give this life up, right?

no !

I’m going to leave the Church.

No you’re not

But I can’t stay.

Are we actually so serious we just jump over living in hypocrisy?

It’s the kind of hurt that I could keep hurting myself with for the rest of my life.

Maybe he knew I’d never fit into his life because I barely fit into it before.

Can you listen to the words as they’re being said and not distort them in your head like maybe just try

I can’t ignore what he so plainly told me.

Ok cool

But…if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t leave at all.

health insurance

health insurance through a part time job at a non profit oh to be white with family connections