I Ain't Sorry, Out Here in the Cleaner Cold

Alright, listen. I'm drunk enough to say this straight, and sober enough—just—to keep my feet moving. That cold you hate, hell, I call it clean. Cleaner than forgiveness never really is. It's been clean for many miles now, scraping the flaws from me all along. This road, it's a bastard, keeps biting up through the sole of my worn out boot, a goddamn toothache in the arch. No, I ain't asking forgiveness from the living. And I sure as shit ain't begging the gods. The old gods, they don't do pardons. They do tallies. They've seen worse sons of bitches than me straighten out without so much as a "pardon me" for the ride. Watched the scales come level, slow, plank by fuckin' plank, in work that no yapping mouth can shorten. I come to 'em like a field that's being measured—no kneeling, just the facts, sparse and still living. And the moving, the walking, is the measuring of that life. Each step is a new weight, another goddamn brick to add to the right side of the book. Yeah, the only heat I got is this gut-ache of moving under load, this slow burn of a day I haven't pissed away, yet.

Now, human pardon? I've seen that racket. It's a leash, see? Played out so long and generous you think the ground under you is your own. Until you hit the end of it and feel the collar bite into your neck. Their hand tight around the loop. Absolution at compound interest; rent paid in "I'm sorries"; the neck bowed to a goddamn fault isn't even real, not anymore, if it ever was. Guilty, not guilty—I left that courtroom. They can keep the gavel. Put it somewhere not even I'll stoop to say. I keep the road. They can keep their grievance, banked and warm like a pile of fresh horseshit. It's all they got left that still feels like a home to them.

My own home had a crack in the foundation, put a weather in me I never picked. Older than my name, laid in before the first wall went up. For years, the doors hung crooked and I couldn't tell you what the hell tilted 'em. I ain't confessing to what I didn't build. I shore up the beams. I true the doors. I build. Every time they start to sag and settle. And then I walk. The work pushes out from the house and into the day, and the day is a road I didn't originally lay, no man does, but I'm laying it now, boot by boot, in mud that ain't mine. You want the whole confession? There ain't one. Here's the penance, though, the only one I know: the roof I patched for some lady whose name I never caught; the debt I settled for some guy with no signature; the hour before the light when I drag my ass up and walk, boots heavy, the cold finding every hole in my coat but never reaching the core. Because the core is already a fire that lives on whatever needs burnin'.

One night, I stood outside a door I knew. Had the word in my mouth, smooth as a worn-out coin from carrying it there for years. It would've bought me a chair back at their fire. A softer winter. My old seat. My name said gentle, like I was a fuckin' housepet. And it would've sold the man I'm still building—sold him cheap at the crossing, for a little warmth. I swallowed it. Knowing how deaf those inside are. I turned. I left. I walked. Picking up bricks along the way. The cold was clean, and that swallow left a whiskey-heat in my throat that was better than any hearth-fire. I'm still walking from that door. The road hasn't softened, and I don't want the fucker to.

I'll fall again. Men do. And when I fall, the principle holds: no words, from this mumbling bastard. I'll just rise an hour earlier. Carry more. Restock the fire with only what deserves to burn: the lie, the excuse, the softer telling. What survives the heat—the part that won't burn—I call that the man. For the wrongs I did, and the wrongs they only dreamed I did, the payment is the same: the mended life, paid daily, at full weight, under a sky that never once asked me to explain myself. Never once begging for forgiveness from those who can't and won't give it. Fuck it, that shit ain't needed anyway. Only puts a taste in the mouth no rotgut can ever kill.

The north knew this before me: herds die, kin die, a man dies standing at his given hour, and one thing only doesn't go to ground—what the deeds say once the man is dirt. The old gods watch. That's all they do. And it's plenty. Knowing they're watching. My face is cold, my feet are worn, my back is screaming, the road still rises like a bitch in heat, and I'm still here. Still building. Still walking. Still adding to the load. Still burning clean. Fuck, sorry. Let this life of mine do the goddamn talking. There's a little left in me tonight, for what's left in the bottle.