Sinner

It’s not my fault, he shouted that night when rain speared the ground like stinging arrows caged his bony figure with endless streaks and dragged the guilt from his bloody hands. I’m not to blame, he said that summer when the sun was a sticky pool on his dark cap that shaded the light and hid his eyes and wrenched a secret pain on his weathered face. You have no proof, he muttered that day when the jeering world threw him clasps of metal to chain about his scarred wrists and feed on and circle the arrowheads lodged into his soul. I will show no shame, he wept that night when he lay poached in a box of darkness that strangled him with leathery hands and wrote upon his brow an inerasable damn.