Holy Ritual

All night, the vines held tight to the trellis,

struggling green fingers strangling wood,

grape-bodies hanging heavy,

their skins splitting in the searing heat

of Denial's sun.

He'd pour wine like ritual,

deep red in a chipped glass chalice:

"Body of Christ" he'd say,

raising it in mock benediction.

Amen.

Vine fingers wrapped snake-like around the stem,

slithering towards the Fruit and the Fall:

Our drunken Adam, gulping the grapes

as if salvation lay at the bottom.

But there was no altar here,

just another sacrifice of sanity,

a red-stained tablecloth

and yesterday's argument,

cold and congealed.

It's easy enough, I suppose, to forgive a pattern,

turning the cheek as good people do -

harder though to forget the Last Supper

where the bottles sweated like flesh

and corks popped with a deep sigh -

confession maybe,

or perhaps the breath you hold before sin.

Each glass filled

was a sacrament gone sideways.

He drank to remember.

he drank to forget,

he drank like it was holy.

And so it goes, that wine becomes scripture:

a story retold, rewritten,

where he was always betrayed

and always forgiving himself.

Outside, the grapevines curled

like question marks,

tugging at the lattice,

yearning for a higher post.

Once, he tried to prune them -

snipped too much,

and they bled.

In church they teach that the blood redeems

but here it only deepened the stain.

He’d raise his glass again:

“This one’s good. Earthy.”

Yes—earthy,

like burial.

At night, I’d hear him

swallow silence in the kitchen,

a quiet liturgy of unripened sadness but never guilt.

He called it “a glass or two.”

but I counted the bottles—

a row of apostles with their heads knocked off,

waiting for resurrection.

What will lift him from the altar of himself,

I do not know, but we can hope

that one day, the wine will stay corked,

and the air will turn clearer,

like the air you're supposed breathe in childhood.

Perhaps then the vines will bear fruit again,

and I'll pluck a cluster, press a grape to my lips,

sweet, not fermented - still whole.

Maybe I’ll see him hold a glass and not gulp,

just turn it in his hand,

watching it catch light like a votive candle and I'll think

maybe this is what grace looks like—

not the absence of thirst,

but the choosing not to drink.