First communion: 7

My kind of love is to make you suffer. Your lips are mine, your hair, your heart—my stolen pleasures, guilty secrets. I lie with you on marble gravestones in the dark and cold. Pain intensifies our sinful act, purifies the knife that cuts. Christ suffered for us, they say. Why shouldn’t we? They say the church is his body, but in what sense? When we love him, do we love the body? There’s the pain of not knowing, then the pain of knowing. Every act of love, like a candle, has many shadows, each still burning in my mind. During first communion, I gave my soul to the church, while the devil lurked in the shadows, waiting to pay for it.