Sin Eater

Don’t I know by now that folk see their sins in the way they choose? There’s always a reason as to why selfishness is not really selfish and crimes are honest and waiting safely by while somefolk else is killed is really the more courageous choice.

With how you came into the world and what you've seen lately you should know, the more you live, the more the sinner and the saint can't be pulled apart. All of us just getting by.

This is why we have cursing. I never understood what made folk do it, but now I know. All our dire feelings stain the heart, and the stains bloom into curses.

I understand why sin eaters were made. Carrying such feelings is too much for one little heart, too much for one body. There must be some hope of shedding regret, grief, sorrow, sloughing them off like a skin and going into death free and light. Else we'd never be able to live.

The Sin Eater walks among us, unseen, unheard Sins of our flesh become sins of Hers Following Her to the grave, unseen, unheard The Sin Eater Walks Among Us.

Do you ever think we're living the wrong life? Like if we could choose for ourselves, we'd choose better than the one we've got?

There's a certain comfort in rules. You know if you're good, or if you're bad. And even if you're bad you know where you fit. You belong. But I don't want other folks' rules to say if I belong anymore. I want to say for myself.

You're nothing if you're dead. I told myself I needed to be alive to help the Sin Eater, but, really, it was my life, dressed up as hers, that I was saving.

The hardest was not having folk to say my noticings to, like if I saw a spider when I rinsed my hands in the basin. Or how I could make river waves by whipping the edge of dry bedclothes up and down, up and down.

It's always women who eat sins, since it was Eve who first ate a sin: the Forbidden Fruit.

I wish you could show folk your insides the way you show your face. Then they'd know I'm not wicked at all.

It's just the dead have time the dying don't.