Sunday Scars

Sunday mornings in our house were a performance. Not the kind with costumes and applause, but a hushed, suffocating ritual where the air itself seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the Reverend’s pronouncements. The scent of starched cotton and guilt hung heavy, a perfume I’d grown up trying to scrub off my skin. Today, the sermon was about the serpent in the garden, about temptation and the wicked ways of the flesh. My father’s voice, a low rumble that vibrated through the threadbare carpet and into my bones, painted vivid pictures of damnation for anyone straying from the Lord’s path.

I sat in the front pew, squeezed between my mother and the hulking presence of my father’s righteousness. My own flesh felt like a cage, a traitorous thing I was constantly battling to keep in line. Every word from the pulpit was a barbed wire, snagging on the secret places inside me, the places that pulsed with a different kind of scripture, one written in stolen glances and the phantom touch of a hand. I imagined Stacey’s smile, bright and easy, a sunbeam cutting through the stained-glass gloom. She was a world away, in a land where preachers didn’t wield sermons like cudgels, where a girl could simply *be*.

My father’s eyes, hard and unforgiving, swept over the congregation, lingering on me for a beat too long. “Some,” he boomed, his voice cracking like a whip, “allow the serpent’s whispers to poison their souls. They turn their backs on the light, embracing the darkness that will surely lead them to eternal fire.” He paused, letting the threat settle, a cold dread seeping into the hushed silence. I kept my gaze fixed on the worn wood of the pew in front of me, tracing the grain, trying to disappear into its mundane patterns. My hands were clasped so tightly in my lap that my knuckles were white, a silent testament to the war raging within.