Day 13 - 2.8.13

Prompt for: February 8, 2013
Subject or Theme: Absolution (ohhh, so many places to go with this one!)
Word(s) to Include: (none)
Forbidden Word(s): guilt(y), sin(s/ner/s)
Additional Parameters: Minimum 20 lines.

"Our own acts are isolated and one act does not buy absolution for another." ~William Butler Yeats


Absolution



Confessional box hides
the priest within,
a thick grate separates
two similar souls.
Forgive me, Father…he begins,
spilling forth the refuse;
expecting forgiveness.
Inside, sheltered by a white collar,
blackened interior,
the listener tightens his fist
around his grandmother’s rosary.
He knows this voice,
keeps his silence
and in doing so
enters a realm
he never thought to tread.
My brother, he thinks…
My brother, smiles the other
with full expectation that
recitation of a few Pator Nostors
and several more Hail, Marys,
will be his sentence.

The string in his grandmother’s rosary breaks,
beads bounce and one rolls free
from under age-blackened cherry wood
and stops, catching a glint of Saturday morning sun.

The penitent bends, picks up the bead
and puts it in his pocket, smiling.
What good is a rosary missing a vital part?

What would you have me say, my…son?
Is there absolution for the damned?
The fruit of your loins is innocent and you will
be sure this child has all he needs. You
will officiate at his baptism and you will give him
as a first name, your second, reversing the two.
This child will bear your surname.
Go now, remembering your station.

Cardinal Luigi Paulo
left the confessional, disturbed
that he couldn’t simply have this child
washed away. But would now
be expected to wash away
the transgressions of man
from young Paulo Luigi.

Inside the confessional,
Bishop Eduardo Stefan
got down on his knees and
collected the fallen
rosary beads.

On the day Paulo Luigi
received his First Communion, he
received a rosary from his uncle.

Seven generations later
it passed into the hands of my child.

Absolution.