My dear Victoria, What is a sinner?

I should be studying instead of this, wish I could.

Inner Monologue — Nicola Everhart, Oxford, 1976

It feels like I’ve swallowed a storm.

Every breath tastes of fear and sweetness, both at once. God, what is wrong with me? I used to know what was right and wrong, there were rules, lines drawn in white chalk by Father McLeary, by my mother’s stern prayers, by every Sunday morning when I’d kneel and beg for forgiveness for sins I hadn’t even committed yet.

But now,

Now I close my eyes and I see her.

Victoria Whitmore.

Her name feels like sunlight pressed against my ribs. I see her everywhere. In the library’s silence, in the shadow of the chapel spire, in the green glass of the quad when it rains. Every time she laughs, quietly, as if afraid the sound might break something sacred, I feel my chest ache in a way that no sermon ever taught me to understand.

I dreamed of her again last night.

I dreamed I kissed her.

I woke up shaking, drenched, whispering prayers I didn’t believe in anymore.

“Forgive me, Father… forgive me.”

But my voice trembled, and somewhere deep inside, another voice whispered; why should you be forgiven for something so beautiful?

And I hate myself for it.

I hate that my heart is not obedient. That my soul bends toward her like ivy to the sun. I’ve tried to starve the thought, to wash it away with holy words, to bury it under study and scripture, but it grows, it keeps growing. She looked at me this morning in the lecture hall, just a glance, nothing more, and it felt like I’d been seen. As if for the first time in my life, someone looked past the face I wear for the world.

And what does that make me?

A sinner.

A fool.

A girl too weak to love the “right” way.

But if this is sin, why does it feel so pure?

When I think of her, I don’t think of filth or desire the way Father spoke of it. I think of quiet things. her hands, trembling slightly when she writes. The way her lips move when she reads to herself. How she looks when the wind lifts her hair near the river. There’s nothing wicked in that, is there? Only beauty. Only tenderness.

And yet… I feel damned.

Because I know what they would say, what my mother would say, her voice trembling with disappointment, as if she could already smell the smoke of hell in my hair.

“You mustn’t let the Devil whisper in your heart, Nicola.”

But what if the Devil’s voice sounds like hers? Soft, kind, gentle, so unlike the fury I was warned of. What if the Devil is not fire, but warmth?

Sometimes I want to run to her. To tell her everything. To say that she is the most beautiful thing God ever made, and that I think He must have made her only to test me. To see how far I can break before I stop calling His name.

I want to protect her.

I want to hold her hands, the hands she thinks are ugly, and tell her they’re perfect, that I could spend a lifetime tracing every line of them like scripture.

I want to tell her that she deserves to be loved gently, wholly, endlessly.

But I can’t.

Because if I do, the world will eat me alive. They’ll call me unnatural, corrupt, lost. And maybe they’ll be right. Maybe I am lost.

There are moments when I kneel to pray and nothing comes out. I just stay there, silent, feeling the cold of the stone under my knees, wondering if God has already turned His face away from me.

And yet, when I see Victoria smile, I almost believe in something holy again. Not the God I was raised to fear, but a quieter one—one that hides in beauty, in art, in the curve of a laugh, in the trembling space between two people who dare not touch.

I think love must be both heaven and hell at once.

And I’m caught between them; burning and blessed.

Oh, Victoria.

What am I to do with you?

What am I to do with me?

I wish I could tear this feeling out before it destroys me, but every attempt just buries me deeper. I’ve tried ignoring her. I’ve tried avoiding her path, sitting on the far side of the hall, keeping my eyes on my books. But then she appears again, walking through the courtyard, sunlight on her hair.

and I’m undone.

There is something cruel about beauty.

It demands worship, even from those who don’t believe.

I keep thinking, if she knew. If she could see what I see when I look at her.

Would she hate me?

Would she flinch?

Or would she understand?

No, no, she wouldn’t. She’s good, gentle, pure. The kind of girl heaven has a place ready for. Not like me.

And yet… when she looks at me, there’s something in her eyes. Something quiet. Almost frightened. Almost the same.

But I mustn’t hope. Hope is the cruelest sin of all.

I wonder, sometimes, if God made me wrong.

Or if the world did.

All I know is that I am tired of running from what feels so achingly human.

I am tired of hating myself for wanting to love something good.

And still

when night falls, and the chapel bells toll, and everyone sleeps

I whisper her name into the dark,

and it feels like prayer.