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.