‘Testament’

By Ross Kelly

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The roots spread out across the forest’s floor like spiny fingers, like a hand clasping another in a silent embrace, laced together in a spell of desire. A glance here and there is rich with want. The tangled pathway makes it seem so easy to trip, but the hands of all those who have come before you are waiting in the shadows so familiar, ready at the first sign of struggle to help you back up, to show you the way, to teach you how to be. You are not the first to tread this path, there is a mountain holding you up, there is a church singing you its song, and there is a child calling for its release.

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As the urge calls out to you like a siren’s song, a wonder crosses your mind. Do you want it more because it is dark? Because it is a sin, a secret, because it is cloaked with a comfortable shame? A truth too sick to find space on your tongue. You have worn this shame your whole life like a glove—why should it change now? Why should it be any less loved? Does it mean more in the darkness when it cannot be observed? Noticed, studied, spied? When it cannot be a thing that exists to any person except for you.

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You feel the divine on your shoulders, you feel the religion beneath your feet, scratching your soles, stealing your soul, taking its toll. Like an object you can stand on, battering and bruising your tainted skin, though it appears as gentle as a kiss. What are these lips of yours if not to receive a curse and a blessing both at the same time? Who are you to take it all if you cannot also give? The world around you has granted its cloak of invisibility; this is your moment to drape yourself in its comfort and run wild.

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The night dilutes darker, a spill of black ink pooling over the sky. You pray a drop will fall onto your nose, you wish to be christened by its gloomy water, by its dread. The roots threaten to tangle your toes further, but you don’t give in. Nobody before you carved this way just for you to turn around, nobody before you gave their light and their life just so you could play it safe. These roots are not trapping you, no, they are leading you the correct way.

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His face is as strange to you in the shadows as it would be in the light when he appears. You wonder if it’s someone you’ve passed before in the big Tesco. That bloke you accidentally crashed your trolley into because your weekly grocery shop had gotten too heavy. The young Scottish boy working the self-scanners, who looked at you every time he thought you weren’t looking back, but you always were. You had grown used to noticing when someone is staring at you without ever even needing to turn your head.

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But maybe this is a stranger too. Maybe a muscle and a mouth you have never come into contact before, a muscle and mouth you never will again. There is a significance in a brief encounter; there is an intimacy in it, knowing you both share this moment that will never need to be spoken of again, a home without an address, a memory without any evidence.

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There is reward in risk. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that the hardest acts to perform are the ones most worth it? Didn’t you ever learn that the bruises you find later on your knees are just a mark of love? If this love means damnation, then you were lost a long time ago. If this love means freedom, then you know what it is to fly.

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His body opens to you like a bible; you read it like a verse and sing it like a psalm. Sometimes your memories do not paint what your eyes do. Sometimes you cannot imagine all of what lurks in your panorama and its view. Of the men and boys that lurk in the greenery, staying so long at times, they return with shades of emerald and sage staining their skin, their eyelashes dripping in hues of forest green. Their tongues a taste of ivy and moss.

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You take as much as you can, and then some. You have walked this path before, and you will walk it again and again and again, until there is no path left to tread. You have come to recognise each curve in its track, each familiar branch that reaches out its fingers to caress you in a loving embrace. You have come to learn which gazes serve as confession, and which ones serve as sin. 

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A groan stumbles out of him when he finishes, and it tries to find a place in this world. It comes demanding the attention it has always been denied. His pleasure is holy, and every time you say its prayer you feel closer to God. As you leave, the roots move to the rhythm of your feet, and they bend and turn in favour of the direction you now take. No longer against you, but for you, on your side, bestowing you with a religious reassurance from those who used to know this path, who used to taste it like communion on their tongue.