confession.

I confess, here and now, to
my crimes, funny the way
the truth always echoes, I
have made mountains
out of men unremarkable,
devoted elegies to the
scars they carved, fault
lines etched across my
hard-learned palms, I
have lain my wanting
heart into reckless hands
and winced – buried my
eyes, inkstain purple – at
its shrieks of betrayal.

This is not her best muse, muse
the masses, citing songs penned
over men whose sanctuary
left her in ruins, what romance
is there in a shelter never
shattered, far lovelier is
the indigo bruising of flesh,
we crave the ache, want
for violences, free Barabbas,
may the storm wrench and
rattle our worlds so that we
might believe in beauty.

My bones, they swell, weary
the floorboards of a place
well-loved and long-lived, I
am through with the
shadowed, seductive art of
romanticizing my pain, I
will run from any love that
only reaches for me when
I hesitate, stay out of reach
to the man only affectionate
when my voice finally breaks.

Ask yourself: Why do I
recoil from a love that insists
I am enough? Who taught
me I must compromise,
safety negotiable, pain
losing its sting when I
paint it academically?

Ask yourself: Who am I
to ignore my mammalian
want, the blood-stained
instinct to flourish in
lieu of survival?

Freedom is a pretty name
for the abandonment of
the self, but I know
to mistrust any revolution
that insists we must never
choose, be chosen, happier
without choices, gluttony
of lonelinesses, a heaping
hundred dried blood poems.