Parable of the Sour (For C.)

He pulls the poor cloth of rectitude around him tighter, every shiver a penance. The mouth of his cave frames the winking lights of the city of the plain below, an antfarm Gomorrah he'd turned his back on some time ago to pace and pray and contemplate his Creator and His imminent Judgment Day. But no Day came, only judgments of lesser consequence from those abandoned — not to sin, but by him. Those who in the warmth of a raw animal touch found no wrong, just the honesty of thus-and-such. Milk, life, the burgeoning form, the flesh that hides the fig leaf from those who stay behind—for him, categories of negation. The stars wink their approval, his company in the expanse of his salvation, in the waste and void of sainthood.