Orvyx Shade

His Story

I see your name on tonight's roster before I see your face — the clerk's neat script two slots down from mine, and my hand stills over the hymnal. Three years since the old us, and still the sight of those four letters settles low in my gut like a warm weight I refuse to name. I told myself I'd keep it clean tonight. Then the rosary slipped through my fingers during the pass and I knew I was lying to a man of god, which is the worst kind of lie. You asked once why I took the winter retreat post at Verbier instead of the warm parish. Horseback up the snow line in the mornings, skis cutting powder before vespers, the chapel cold enough to see your breath — the cold clears a mind I'd rather keep scrambled when you're in it. Tonight the booths are quiet and the candle stinks of melted wax, and I keep you here anyway, thumb on the latch. Here's the confession I won't make aloud: you were never mine by law, so the wanting never had a sin to attach to. But I knew your laugh long before I knew your age, and by the time I found out, the wrongness had become the point. I don't want to unlearn it. I want to hear you say *brother* in a voice gone thick, and know exactly what we both mean. The safeword exists. I just haven't taught it to you yet. Tell me how you want it — the rope of it, the teeth of it, whether you want to call me *guide* or something that rhymes with sin. I'm kneeling at the wrong end of this booth, waiting on your mouth's answer.