Borderline

Friar Laurence’s Last Confession

No one else saw the shiver of her ribcage
beneath Romeo’s arm, the fog of her breath
as it clouded the flat bottom of the chalice.

Her skin was still warm, bright blood staining
her bodice in the shape of a cross. A sign.
He carried her to his cell, its solitary darkness

now luminous with her dying glow. The wound
between her breasts opened and closed like
a second mouth, begging to be kissed. She

was already damned. He trimmed the candle,
lifted his robe. The next few days bore witness
to his transgresson: the creak of a bed, the turn

of a lock - her soft sobbing and then her silence,
accompanied only by mumbled prayers, the crack
of leather striping his broad sinful back with scars.