"Biblical Love" • Flower Face (by Isobel Bradshaw)

I.

You can’t digest the body of Christ, no matter how hard you try. By the time you stop going to mass you’ve eaten enough of them to line your stomach, your intestines, to form a crust over your vestigial organs. You can take the woman out of the church, spruce her up nice and secular, give her a taste for wine that’s not the blood. The church, however, will never leave the woman.

  II.

The last time she came within fifteen feet of an altar was Christmas Eve, one twelvetide past an attempt on her own life that left her with nothing but a stomachache from too many pills that didn’t do their job. The scale-Christ of her mucosa delivered her from evil and into a glass of merlot, the sweet embrace of nights alone with the bottle. Be not afraid, he says to the claw-shredded remains of her liver. It’ll grow back. You have my father to thank for that, you know.

  III.

Behind the altar, in his own little alcove, is Christ on a cross, seven times as tall as any parishioner. Sometimes she dreams of climbing it, perching on His shoulder like a bird, a beloved pet He couldn’t bear to part with, even in death. She pricks her fingers on the crown of thorns, trying to brush the hair back from His face. Imagines stretching the length of His arm to trace her fingers over carved stigmata, wonders if the blood would really taste like wine.

  IV.

In the school only a few winding hallways away, they teach her about the value of sacrifice. Of selflessness. Giving up everything you have in service of something greater than your insignificant mortal body, and receiving the ultimate reward at the end. She wants so desperately to believe it that she throws herself in the path of anyone bigger than her. Does what they ask. Lays curled up in bed at night, picturing herself at the foot of the cross, offering up her wounds as proof of devotion.

  V.

The baptismal font is shaped like a cross too: waist-height, deep enough to drown you in the same instant it washes away your sins. For years she walked past it twice a week, skimmed her fingers along its holy surface, convinced the dampness on her forehead that left streaks in her makeup was doing something. This is what she’s been looking for, maybe, right under her nose the whole time.  There’s nothing quite so all-consuming as water, after all, and she never did learn how to swim.

Isobel Bradshaw is a queer and disabled author writing fiction for lapsed Catholics. She has a BFA in Creative Writing and lives in the Midwest with her partner and cats. She is on Instagram @girlprometheus and Bluesky @girlprometheus.bsky.social.