He goes into the little box, sits. He is supposed to say something. The latticed grille, through which he can see only a shadow, exudes a smell of rosewater. His breathing so loud. Yes? prompts the priest. Xie swallows. Tongue stuck. How long has it been since your last confession. He rubs his face. When has he ever told anyone anything? Really told them. Long silence. The priest waits. What do people say, here? Sins only the church can address. The priest can’t forgive someone for gassing a farm full of mink. Or eating a steak. Or cutting down a tree. He can’t forgive what isn’t a sin. He doesn’t even know what sin is. In Teresa’s mansions there are no animals, no plants, nothing living at all; those are left outside the castle, in the dirt, along with the most tortured souls, and the farther you get from them the better you are, cleaner; is that what they all believe, what this priest believes, what he teaches, that nature is garbage, is evil, and only when you free yourself of all that is living do you reach what is good. You piece of shit, Xie whispers. The priest is silent. Xie pushes out, the door squealing on its brass hinge. The church like the house, his attic, safe only if you are content to live like a fucking fool. His father can’t understand it, why he can’t be completely happy even in the garden, in the woods, when he is free to do as he pleases, to make the sort of life he wants, Erik allowing him every possible freedom, not understanding that the only available context for that freedom is poison. A comfortable existence borrowed against total collapse. Do what arouses you to love, Teresa wrote, again and again: never what arouses you to anger, to rage. It’s no spirit that loves the woods; only a body is capable of it, one that keeps its eyes on the ground, in the meat of the earth. And yet it is also the flesh that blinds you. Cripples you. Because what you came here to say is: What do I have to do to have him back. Can you bring him back to me. Looking for him everywhere. The red glass in the windows, liquid in the sun. The dandelions clustered against the stone, the tallest things growing on the denuded land, land cleared so that the church could sit in silence on the dirt, facing the woods, friend or foe? It is the only place left that could hold on to the body, that kept it for you. You can’t untangle one from another. Do you have to? Anything less than union is hell. Such a sharp line, between the field and the trees. You cross it for the last time.