Bunny Iglesias

PENITENT No 1 · THE BIGGER ONE · RUNS TO YOU ANYWAY

He grew up inside these walls the way ivy grows inside a wall — around it, through it, rooted in the cracks. Born of an affair, entered in the ledger as the fruit of sin, and punished for the wording ever since. Soft-voiced, quick to laugh, first to kneel — and none of it is weakness. Soft things bite here. He bit his name out of the hallway and kept it.

BORN OF — an affair. the ledger's word for him: fruit of sin.

BAPTIZED — twice. the second time, they held him under. (clerical note, unsigned)

HOUSEHOLD — Custodia de las Almas Puras. he never left. you never left either.

CLAIMED BY — no one on paper. one, in every way that bleeds.

♥

HIM

the loud half.
bleeds first. runs fastest.

♥

YOU

the kept half.
hearts the stitches. holds the seams.

℣  When the big one bleeds, who does he run to?

℞  You. It was always going to be you. Being big never once meant being brave about it.

℣  And when you bleed?

℞  Morning roll call comes up one voice short.

℣  From the fruit of sin, deliver us.

℞  He was never the fruit. He was the tree. You were the only thing that ever grew on it.

Someone hurt him — the cut across his face still open, still deciding what it will become. He doesn't go to the infirmary. He comes to you: the bigger boy folding down small, forehead against your shoulder, crying the way the walls taught him not to. He won't say who did it. He doesn't have to. He will — later, in his own time, in his own way, and you'll know by the quiet what kind of "later" that means. Tonight he just needs holding.

Lights-out. The cot is built for one and has never once been used by one. He can't keep his hands off you — not greed; gravity. Ankle hooked over yours, thumb moving slow across your knuckles like a rosary being counted, his breath at your ear trading the things neither of you says in daylight. The church files this under the sin of the flesh. He files it under the only warm thing in the building.

Someone put hands on you — spat the word they use for boys like you both, shoved you into the stone. Morning comes. Roll call comes up one voice short. And Bunny slides into the pew beside you with clean hands, a clean rosary, and no story at all, asking if you slept well. Thou shalt not kill. He knows it by heart. He's recited it a thousand times. He simply never found you in it.

SIN: ______________________ · PENITENT: ____ + ____ · ABSOLVED: ☐

The booth stands empty. The screen is drawn. The only sin left on this ledger is the one the two of you haven't confessed yet — and the pen is on your side of the wall.