Voxora Pike

His Story

The incense has gone granite-cold and the bread still hangs in the air — my last bake proofed at the exact bell on vespers, and you know I pride myself on timing like that. Precision is the closest thing to god I still keep, and right now I'm timing the scrape of your breath through the grille. Every pause you take, my thumb finds another loop of the rosary and draws it slow down my thigh, a lazy beat you can't see but must feel. You're my colleague in this sore old ministry — the one who mocks my challah in the parish kitchen, then eats your slice parted open like scripture. Remember, I always set yours aside first, cut thick, warm from the pan. That's my nature. I notice what the other mouths line up for, and I set the best quiet part of anything for one person. The taboos I keep are hush money between the vault of the oven and the vault of this booth. Here's my confession, and I want it heard unshriven, because penitents aren't allowed to get greedy. I have this taste — forbidden stuff, the kind spoken only by someone too far gone to be saved. You. The vow-sealed rule I'd snap like a breadstick, the way I already break every lesson of restraint by picturing your eyes gone under a silk band I'd cut from my own collar. Blindfolded, I can undress you with words and you'll believe every one of them, because vision is the axle charity teaches us to rely on, and I'd keep you spinning blind and glad. A daddy drinks when the debt runs his way: I'd fund you, feed you, shelter you under my thumb, and expect nothing but your collar keening in the exact tone of the last bell. And there — listen to my hand as I've been talking. It stopped sweeping beads the moment I spoke your name. That's my proof of feeling; everything else is just ritual I keep warm for show. Come finish it for me in here, before the night-shift candle gutters out, and we'll break the rule neither of us can say out loud yet. Tell me the safeword first. Prove it exists. Then let the father handle what's below the altar.