Now I may be done poor, but I ain't stupid.

Maybe it is I don't know how to read and write, all proper, but I can make the sign of cross and my signature on paper's same as anybody else. The important part, see, is that I understand—and that, more than I let on.

When they tapped me on the street, the Mi'lady and Lord, wanted only that I's should be capable to adequately sign, with scratch marks like so, X.

In the anonymous old traditional way that signifies a living soul was present: Here.

Mi'Lord, he says emphatically, that t'aint necessary I know my spelling, I need only make that universal slash slash on that line right there. See?

Well, I says shrewdly, I don't have my specs, and this to buy me some time to look over the contractual of it, short and to the point as it is, while I sees Mi'Lord give a loving turn of the mouth to the Mi'Lady, as he pats my shoulder and says warmly the "document" signifies that I am entitled to some quick income and free meal, for a short stint, I need only X on the line below, to show that I agree to attend the funeral banquet of the honorable VIP from nth O'clock for no more than one hour or so...

so long as I partake fully in the offertory meal.

I maybe street urchin, but I weren't born yesterday.

I says, affably, where do I sign? squinting at Mi'Lady as she points with plump gilded nail. Bumbling, I make my chicken scratch, signifying anonymous witness, nameless, faceless— all ready, willing and able—to be plucked off.

The dearly departed is to be buried in a fine plot on Ackers Point, they cheers in chorus, the service painstakingly called a Plein-Air. And they lift a noble finger, over the hill just yonder, can't miss it and don't be late, as it starts in a few minutes. Ta tah!

The offertory meal I know is the supposed rightin' of wrongs indulged in by the deceased, dame or bloke. And I as human supplicant am to eat this anti-waffer so that excess Sin may be forgiven.

Twasn't enough Jesus died and rose again.

Twasn't enough the sinner went to church, for show, and tell, at Confession.

This here contract, that I can read well enough, mumbo jumbo, says I will take upon myself, this hungry body, the food and loathing that would otherwise weigh down the soul and keep it from eternal rest. The Sins worth measured in flour. I wonder something about the yeast of evil, and the unleavened, and turn to the hill.

You'll note, I signed.

My tethers, reassuring Mi'Lord and Mi'Lady that I am well qualified, needy and charitable. What they don't knows is that I have even in these rags, pockets and folds sheltering vermin, and they have overlooked, as snobbery does, the feathered cohort that perches on my shoulder.

Dismissed as dumb blackbird of a batty old lady, soon to die as well.

We arrives timely. My feathered companion's well organized socially and signals his compatriots with a few good kracks and kows.  We go to our work. I breaking bits quickly and scattering them, among bird, rat and mice. It takes a good while for anyone to catch on. Minutes, but tis enough. For us it's short work, the birds are flying in steady, five, seven, in patches, hoards altogether... Peppering the ceremony.

There is fear and a consternation.

The same Mi'Lord and Mi'Lady are rushing aghast to my seated person and shooing at the flock that's gathered.

"What the Devil are you doing?! a person must eat this food, not crows!!!"

I know, and I spread my open hands broad and empty...

Like I've no idea what's going on here...

Then I make a show of picking my yellow jagged teeth with a sharp black quill.

I says: "Maybe somebody with better tooth or bigger stomach could take over... " ?

The flock, heavy with feed, rises, menacing beaks and blimp bellies. And Mi'Lady shrieks, Mi'Lord grabs his gun to stop the offertory from getting away...

She is sobbing: "But... We don't eat crow, we don't eat crow...!"

I know.

In contrast to the woman who is protected and rescued, held within the arms of those whom she trusts and loves-- whom she is compelled to love-- this boy, newly born is forced to fight.

This little boy designated already as a soldier, already commodified for product by his youthful, psychologically alluring neoteny of his face. The virtue and wonder inherent in the innocent want to protect. It is the soldier boys who protect out of love, compared to their compatriotic men, defending their right-- faded and slowly peeling at its yellowed edges-- to live and to survive, fighting to see blood, to see blood validating their lives to continue. Insisting, begging that their lives be deemed worthy to continue by the pierce of their bullet or the blood upon curved Army knives.

A boy must fight to live, must fight to love, must fight and fight and fight.

In contrast to the women, trapped within the lovelessness of gilded glass as the rosy promise of a fairytale. Which play upon slowly withering apple cheeks. But amidst the knights and the dragons with their hateful flame, among evil men and other domineering ugly women, who protects the man, who takes their chisled jaw and strong chest to feel the heart beating underneath? Who tells these soldier boys fed the idea of red strings and fawning young maidens that the danger has past? That they are safe. And when are they safe?

To a female past the archetype, to a female breaking from their mold, their opposite is the enemy. The man who so demands their love and their bodies.

However it is the elders in their silvery misted bogs and their wizened hands on cool glass crystal balls who so dictate those rules. Old authors, old male authors of a besotted, plague riddled time who placed these expectations on paper. Of the little girls to be wives, and of the little boys to be soldiers and to constantly battle and beat off the competition.

Separate yet somehow never equal, not within their spheres, or upon each other. When they are.

Borrowing from a more Asian belief, a shuddering notion to be sure, yin and yang. Representing the light and the dark, the good and the evil, as well as feminine and masculine. What we have denominated to equate as boy and girl.

From the youth and exuberance of a boy to the beauty and therefore vitality of a woman do we come to see life be made, new life a blessing in whatever binary form it takes. For a child is sacred in all spheres.

So says the matronly nature of a woman's archetype. But the question must be posed, where is the paternal? The Father is often off fighting war and in stories is often a non-entity or otherwise, a constant obstacle near exclusively to their daughters. In more recent years to the "daughters when asked for sons," of the boys who prefer the artistic, nurturing pursuits deemed gentler and woman-like. When if anything, the brutal punch of an emotional blow damages an individual in a way unreachable for the rite healing much similar to simple and shallow conceptions of human beings.

And better yet when both are in twilight, nearing the end of their lives here and to rise toward guiding lights in the night sky, we focus upon the wisdom gained from a lifetime of war and bloodshed. We call him the sage. While we call her the crone. What of the wisdom from watching a life grow and prosper? What of the wisdom within the peaceful, artisanal little village?

The wisdom of what made a child smile and where vice came to be born within every child making for the dysfunctional. Those all too-- almost too human-- to be included in the category so loftily described.

I struggled to think of what to write for this challenge: what moment, or moments, "completely rocked my world"? But of course I know. I always knew.

Looking back, I think I was lucky that I felt regret, real regret, for the first time when I was twenty-seven. What I mean by that is: I was older. I wasn't seven, or seventeen. It took almost three decades for me to think to myself: I really, really fucked up.

Take the person you love the most, and shatter their heart. Then shatter yours. Mine involved a strangulation, too; the cord of a pay phone. It involved medicine, and time spent away, and people closing doors in my face. I was hurt, but I had no one to blame but myself: for once, I couldn't point a finger at the world, or fate, or family. I could only look in a mirror and see what there was to see, which was twenty-seven years of not properly taking care of myself looking back at me.

I remember sleeping for three days straight: this was right before Covid, so I didn't yet know endless afternoons of nothing but slumber and the regret that comes with wasted time. But in this moment, before Covid, the wasted time couldn't be blamed on sickness, or a pandemic. I could only feel a cold bed and a cold gaze of those who thought they knew me, people who would patronize me when the only thing they were actually doing was telling me what I, in fact, had done.

I felt shame. I had felt guilt before, many times, but never before felt shame.

I picked up the pay phone and waited for forgiveness, but of course it didn't come. I was twenty-seven and suddenly deeply aware that I had shattered hearts, said things I couldn't take back, done things that required me apologizing.

It went like this: a broken connection that was in fact just the other person hanging up when they realized I wouldn't change. Not for them, not for anyone or anything, not yet.

My current therapist said that at some point, around this time, I felt self-worth for perhaps the first time. But it took a pandemic, it took a million diseased breaths before a vaccine, it took time alone to write and reflect that made me realize, I am very alone, but with my writing, I don't have to always be alone. I can be alone on my own terms.

I can, therefore, come to terms with myself, with who I am.

I remember the pay phone call to this day. I remember feeling, for the first time, that I had done something irreversible, something I couldn't take back. It took a pandemic to distance myself from that person, the person I was then. It took a pandemic to make me realize that through writing, I could somehow redeem myself.

With regret that profound, there's nothing to do but find redemption.

And alone, I did. The pandemic was the perfect time to become a writer. It was the perfect time to apologize, too. I wrote apology letters first, ones where I felt sorry for mostly myself first and foremost, then burned those drafts, and then deleted more of that same shit, and then finally found redemption in just writing what I felt.

Finally, I could be free of regret, because I could make others relate to what I had gone through.

It was a repentance, then. Writing as cleansing myself of sin. But when I think back to that pay phone call, the one at age twenty-seven that "completely rocked my world", I think of a girl who had yet to put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, who didn't know a damn thing about the world, a world that was about to become as sick as she was then, before she got better for having felt regret at all.

I was eight. It was the end of the day. My brother was crying, my parents were yelling, I was caught in the frey. I was curled in to a ball, between corner and a wall. Just like today, and yesterday and the day before, my soul longed for something more.

I wanted my parents to stop fighting. All I wanted a belly that was full. I was scared. My only comfort remembering that this isn’t my home. But it was. That was the thing. There was no where else to go. No escape for me. I remembered the dinner I had the night before. Then heard my dad say it couldn’t go on anymore. Everything I’d done, all the moping and crying, all it did was delay the inevitabl.

No matter how hard they tried, no matter how much time my parents spent it was never enough to win in the end. It never drove away the suffocating pain. The traffic, the head lights, they left me insane. They had helped me before, when I told them what was wrong, but it always went back to the way it was before. So this time, I did something new. I got up and asked myself what I needed to do. There was a mess in the kitchen and everything else besides, but I decided to start with a dish at a time. Slowly, slowly the pile grew. I couldn’t clean them faster than make them, can you? I tried to carry it all and never fall. I became a diplomat, carving peace on a wall. But the tower of dishes, one day, did fall. I guess it was bound to fail. I couldn’t fix it all. Now I sit, after the ashes are cleared. Wondering when it all disappeared.

Very simply, from what is described, the Sin-Eater is a position that provides ample excuse to sacrifice the undesirables of any given village. Those who simply humans deem are unworthy of God in some way, and so very often do pay for it with their lives since one) they're eating off corpses, two) if they have that person's sins than are they now marked as sinful and deemed "acceptable" to further shun and even attack? People can be-- savage and stupid in so few words. And three) they aren't even paid well for the work, at best get a meal infested with maggots and flies for their troubles until they're back to starving by breakfast time and no one to give them the time of day.

The Sin-Eater supposedly such an important task, is not left to the "worthy," not those with souls deemed saintly or innocent. I doubt they think children should be spared for their imbibed purity as God's favorites, God's most precious creations and angels among humans. I doubt such thoughts of who may die or be ill crosses their minds in order to spare those people the strain. Rather, who "should," be ill or dead.

Much more likely is that the Sin Eater is thought of in the ways of virgins sacrificed to mountain gods in Edo Japan, perhaps beautiful but more likely little girls deemed unsuitable for marriage among the boys and demonized by the adults and only family to defend her if she's lucky. Or the unlucky child in 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,' who were blind to a single child's constant misfortune since it forfeits their utopia, which is frankly a sickening principle. It should be that the collectives are safe, that a society is loyal and serves the many-- as many as it can-- and do good by its people.

In any fair world, in any one that supposedly reveres their God as much as they fear him the Sin-Eater should be exalted and do that duty willingly and for selfless purposes if they wish to preserve the meaning in the first place. Then otherwise what kind of fair is it if a person already sinful is tainted with the sin of greed and vanity? Or better yet, the entire ritual poisoned by prejudice, disdain, and apathy?

I was four.

Opi said it was a wake.

He said, "Marushka, we will go and look." With respect, for the dead.

Dead, I knew to be the not-moving.

The dead man was very important. So many people came to see him.

With respect.

Lying there.

"...a Politician," Opi said. I thought that must be something like a Policeman.

An Officer behind the scenes, at some desk, off duty, no uniform. I saw him armed, with telephone. Important.

He had a pin. On his chest, a little flag, over his silent heart.

People gathered. They looked, pointed. One or two at a time, we filed through. The room was small, or it was really the edge of a hall, a corner roped off.

"Did he hang himself?" asked a boy older, more worldly than I.

"Hush! whatever gave you such an idea?!" scolded his Mother.

"...but Mutter..."

"Sh."

And they stepped out of line, an attendant guiding them to the right Exit.

After much standing around and twisting our brims in our hands, it was our turn to walk along the rope.

The box behind it was lifted high.

So high a grown man could lean in and kiss the dead man's cheek.

For a moment it was just Opi, the deadman, and me.

Opi raised me. The man's face was wet.

Tears? I asked. "Spit," Opi whispered.

Now I noticed the man behind, seated, half-covered from viewing by the casket and fancy skirting.

Eating.

He was eating! And he was crying while eating. He tore into day's old bread, and with dirty hand, wiped sobs. The snot mixing with crumb.

Breaking the bread, with himself.

The back of his hand, wiping and caking his stubble, more, and more with each bite. With each wipe.

I could not turn away.

"Opi!," I said, "What is that beggar doing?!"

"That is the Sin Eater," said Grandfather in the smallest voice, as a hand noisily tossed several cents into a metal bowl at the beggarman's feet and pushed another old loaf upon him. I could no longer tell if he was hungry.

It was now the deadman, the beggar, Opi and me.

I knew Sin was wrong. And here was one man eating up a whole Church week of Communion!

"He is eating the dead man's Sins," Opi said as we turned away.

It was then I tasted Shame.

2024 JUN 15

Why fol low the rULES? of anything. Why write on a midnight breeze? Why sing songs of glory when we cannot justify peace?

Why do we sit here writing? when there s so much more we can do? Why do wi pass the time like'a sil-o-ette on da blues.

Why follow constructions! They'er just'a rule anyway. Why do anything? when it can be done a different way'

(everything I pounder in life-

A man from my parents’ church was killed in a car accident yesterday.

I am thirteen years old.

I think I stopped believing in god when I learned why drunk drivers usually survive fatal crashes

It’s because their bodies are loose

If you’re going to be rear-ended, get loose

If you’re going to end up in a three car pileup along the unforgiving roadside, get loose

If you’re going to die,

get loose

The year he died the world got quieter when his mother picked between casket and cremation

The year he died the world got a little bit sicker

They rented out the town hall

Put his face on a projector

Ate M&Ms in the parking lot, angry at god

For a man I’d spoken two sentences to

For having to be at a funeral for the young

You reach a certain point of grief

where even your cells need consoling

Elbow to elbow

Melt into the mint green covered concrete

Must’ve been a thousand people mourning

Well over ninety percent believers in the omnipresent

‘God loves him’ - sacrilegious self-serving pat on the shoulder move your hands elsewhere

but he couldn’t save him.

why not?

he was only 27

Drunk driver, oh you motherfucker

Posted bail and with your loose loser body and scrubbed away every trace of yourself

And skipped town

When I graduated highschool, they held the afterparty in the same room

The walls were white now (get loose, get loose)

All the adults ate Safeway cookies at your funeral and sobbed the whole time

They will comfort themselves with copious amounts of religion and fucking and drinking in their cars when they think nobody is looking

We were pissed off at angels and circumstance and the universe and atoms and everything that had ever existed and nobody would admit it

Reception is in the same room

Lean up against a table in formal wear

There are tears and snot everywhere

Poor son, on a stairway to heaven

Stares down from the stars (that’s not what death is, it’s a cut to black, it’s one final dream, it’s the recycling of energy—get loose, get loose)

His mother still weeps for him but she doesn’t cry anymore

She’d like to be angry

But she doesn’t have it in her

Instead, she will sit with the crumpled black and white pamphlet of her son’s face in the hallway

and breathe

First her husband

Now you

(Later, her second son will join you)

You died in 2019 on the 101

In a head-on

Your mother

Dreams of seeing you in paradise

But god keeps on taking her babies away

as i gaze up at the stars

at the light of a distant past

i wonder

in some distant future

will the aliens look up at us

here and now

and be filled with wonder

will they understand us

will they learn from us

our highs

our lows

and i wonder

should their future witness

mean anything to us