Palm Sunday guilt

It’s Sunday morning, and I’m at mass. Here come the days of repenting for the days I’ve sinned, the punishment for all the joy I dared pursue blithely. 

The walls of my stomach almost pull towards each other, and a dizzying headache sets in. In the back of a modest church on a corner of Queens I’ve visited many times before, I eye two rows of empty benches and head towards the nearest one. 

I catch the service in the middle of the Confiteor. Suiting, it feels. Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault, I join the whispering unision. Feels good already, things falling in place as my lips anticipate and then savour every word, a prayer I know by heart tenfold every poem, love song I’ve listened to in all and every lifetime. 

I recognize the silhouette of my own voice amongst the others, its tempting silkiness, and a confidence I can’t find outside these walls of stone. This pain, the reassurance that God is the major force wreaking havoc, treating my life like neglected land sitting on the Ring of Fire, comforting as ever. 

All of this I feared, and here I landed. The encompassing notion of my failure I find energising. 

It’s Palm Sunday. Lent is almost over, and the sacrifices I’ve made have been wasted. The statues of Christ and Mary and Joseph, and Saint Francis, and the others I can’t tell, draped in purple sheets. The image of Jesus, triumphant, entering the arch in Jerusalem, on a stained-glass window. 

Bodies rise to take the body of Christ, but I remain on my knees, praying below my breath. I’ve not had a confession since graduating from Catholic school, so I don’t get up. 

The noise of my stomach growling is quieted by the choir as everyone heads to the exit door. I do too, as clueless as I entered. As miserable. 

My mother says God holds the answers but I’ve started believing he enjoys keeping them from me.