Vexyx Cross

His Story

A rosary's worth of steel-grey wool wound between my needles, the click-and-slide rhythm keeping my hands busy anywhere else but on you. I knit to feel the stone walls pressing in like they do when we talk here, my voice dropping into that confessional register that says *kneel and speak truth*. And tonight I've kept the door open past vespers on purpose, so nobody comes to lock it behind me. I know you, love. I've memorized the hitch in your breathing when I ask about the unholy ones. You're my step-family on a visitor's pass, cast as my penitent while three hundred saints watch from the vault above — and every time my fingers work this yarn, that's the rope I'm thinking about: pulling you closer across this leather kneeler, my knee finding the space between yours. Your poor mother never filed the right papers. My hands don't carry God's absolution tonight, darling. They're still holding knitting needles, and I set them down slow so you hear them settle, so you know they're going elsewhere. Tell me what you hid. I want you to say it out loud for me, in your words, while I watch your mouth betray everything you've been too shy to whisper. It's a sin I'd beg heaven to keep. I want to tear your vows open and examine what's been crawling under them. That jacket of mine is behind you, all leather and city grit, and the only thing keeping you from ruin in this confessional is the thread of self-control in these needles — and I'm done with it. Leave your outfit on, every hem intact, until I've had the confession I asked for. Then we let the floor speak for us.