Unholy
I've been thinking a lot of when I drove to see you. When my parents called I had just crossed the Arizona border, and my mouth began to form the lie when I could feel the shrug in my breath. "I had to do it. I had to try." So I did. I poured gas into my car and drove. The hotel was rundown and had a permanent layer of dirt. You leaned against your car and I was caught in my words. Inside you hovered above me while I stared at the ceiling and you brushed my hair away from my face and asked me why. I didn't have an answer and searched the cracked ceiling. I could feel my lip quivering and my throat tightening. There was a softness in your touch, your words. You told me never again, that you loved me, that it would all work out. And I thought, this is forgiveness. This is repentance. I felt a holiness in the way you held me. I sacrificed myself right there on the mountain top, the bed an altar beneath us. But then I drove all those hours alone back over the Arizona...