The Colour of Sin

I sat on the bus, holding the pamphlet
Given to me by a woman in the street
I hadn’t managed to dodge this one
The way I do most pamphlet waving people
Large red print, Do You Know the Colour of Your Sin?
I looked out the window, she was no longer standing there
Looking left and right, I wondered which way she might have walked
The message felt personal.
I etched the memory of her face into my mind
Hoping I would see her again to ask why
She had handed out the pamphlet to only me
The list of sins according to colour
White – a lie to save someone from the pain of truth
Blue _ envying your friends life,
wishing it to be your own turns this sin dark blue
Brown – for stealing
Purple – for cheating on your boyfriend/husband
The list went on quite a bit, right through to murder
The colour – black clinging to the list
That was the one sin I hadn’t committed.
Stepping from the bus,
I felt giddy with the sudden memory
of terminating a pregnancy in my teens
My sin had come back to haunt me from the hands of a stranger
So I thought, until weeks later I bumped into the same woman
I asked her why she had given me the pamphlet
Her dark rimmed eyes looked right through me
“because the child you aborted should have been mine…
My name, should you wish to know, is the wife of Thomas Grey.”
A name I remembered well; the father of the child never born
That’s when I realized that sins never die
They linger like a bad smell on the wind
Time brings them back to you
I watched her walk away,
wishing I could turn back time…

©anitadawes 2020