I Drank the Blood

I drank the blood. Shuffled up to the altar, pearly white shoes scraping over faded white tile dirtied by the footsteps of countless sinners. (I knew, even then, that that same grime already claimed my soul.) I accepted the golden chalice with shaking hands and brought it ever so gently to my lips. It tasted like poison, but I drank the blood. I’d never feel so holy again as I did that day, wholly pure in untouched white satin, bursting with life and joy and the light shining from the proud eyes of the parishioners. But the light of their spirit would soon curdle in my veins from the hatred of false goodness. I pored over page after page, dutiful scholar I was, and found nothing but tongues lashing like the Romans they should’ve disdained, not mirrored. Every biting indictment corroded the gleam of my soul until the only light remaining was the reflection of that glistening chalice. I am not the one who bit the forbidden fruit, and yet the sweetness of its juice mixes with the blood on my dry, cracked lips, crimson trailing down, down, down my ashen face. A stain of my humanity. A stain of Your hands. I drank the blood. The transplant attacked my system, draining the life from my eyes until I was left pleading You to sop up the few lasting drops with a pitying rag. Merciful as You’re written, I begged you, knees bloodied and scarred, to transform me. Make me whole or dismiss me to the depths. Fix me, or allow the scourge and fire to purify me for ever and ever. I called into the night for year after year before I realized it was as vacant as I was revolting. Was I right? I may never know, but I do know something inside of me broke those days, shattering me from the inside out. I try to escape, peeling back rotten layers, but it courses through my veins steady and permanent as my beating heart. I cannot claw it out, no matter how I try, for I drank the blood.