The Eucharist

Leah’s eyes were pallid, like the reflecting pools of the community garden. Every emotion splashed into her cheekbones and the “sucker” of her thin, pink lips. Years echoed off of her lips and made an immediate descent back to their heavily-chapped being. Leah held her face for as long as she could, as tightly as she could. Her brain was utter mush but perhaps she could straighten it up a bit.

Leah’s black and white attire clung to her more than they should have. These garments signified the last bits of her freedom-she was bound forever and ever. She shuffled her feet over to a wire-mesh fence that surrounded the property. Once Leah stopped, it was as though the shackles were gone again-torn away in some shameful ceremony. But it was not so, it was not so.

A clean, fresh finger ran its way, sneakily, across the tops of the fence. And then-prick! It was as quick of a motion as the rose-shaded grief that now spewed from Leah’s thumb. Without warning, a curved, turned-up feeling marred her mouth. The dead flowers that sat in rows along the fence no longer seemed so dreary. The gardens, the ones that had always annoyed her, began to stand out as magnificent. It was like a maze-begin, lose your way, and then begin again. But something was amiss-the liquid had ceased to flow anymore. Leah was shaken; she wished to be able to smear it into her hair, if only as a way to remember this event by.

And then, Leah was in a room.

The room was long and was connected to a place with high windows and colorful window panes. It was the Eucharist and bottles with sacred images of grapes were placed neatly on rows of shelves here. Leah had trouble popping off the cork, and it was as though she had never been asked to open a bottle of wine before in all her life. When she did get the bottle open, she titled it up and drank. But she could not continue, the little amount she had drunk was the amount that had always been passed out. Besides, it tasted more like the blood, and Leah could not swallow the blood. She was lower than the blood and the body and the entire order. The blood could not save her.

The Eucharist was quiet and the wine and the bread did not move and neither did Leah. Perhaps the Eucharist had the answer-the Eucharist held glass and food. The Eucharist held everything.

For a moment, Leah considered spending 40 days and 40 nights in that place, and then maybe the virgin would listen to her. But, much like the blood, the virgin was gone.

Leah’s hands rested against the glass of the wine bottle, her hand raised it up into the air and brought it to a head against the alter. Liquids began to gush like a violet waterfall and glass found its way into Leah’s skin. A piece rested in between a model of a cross and Jesus Christ and she brought it to her throat-hoping Jesus would look at this moment and forgive her.

“Leah!”

Father John appeared in front of her like a phantom of her conscience.

He sighed and said: “It’s to the confessional with you, my child.” And then carried up a Leah with a piece of glass still clutched in her hand, like a Bible in a burning convent.