Originally published in Kamena Magazine
An excerpt
He’s back again. The scrawny one whose hands shake when he speaks, even when he tries to hold them tight in those white-knuckled fists of trepidation. He starts up the steps towards me, reaching out with one hand as he says,
“Father,” but he’s come at the wrong time today.
I turn to face him from where I stand on my grey concrete slab, under the grey concrete sky, in the back alley of this middle-of-nowhere concrete place.
“It’s the uniform, isn’t it?” I ask him.
He stops, and I can see the confusion manifesting on his forehead. This isn’t what the priest is supposed to say. I can see him thinking it, looking at me with those wide, reverent eyes.
Jessica Kashdan-Brown 