Is it really so hard to understand?
Are you so guiltless?
In the minutes before I bend my knees to the dead wood of the confessional
I find myself confronting the horfrost
Of your persecution and my own confused shame.
You ask “Why?” And I find the heavy heat of incredulity suffocating.
As if you yourself are without the freckling on your conscience
And I alone have ever sinned.
Standing before you in this moment I am a gymnast in the cavern of my own chest;
Anxiety the hand waving about my rapidly devolving excuses like a ribbon.
My knees crack against the base of our private altar as the trumpet’s hollow brass rings out and the ribbon falls still.
I wrap myself in self preservation, felted and cheap though it is, and choose to lie a little longer.