Confession

I hide.

I also ask and ask

and ask.

They say I sin by trusting truth

more than the lies.

My most regretted? At times, I find more

solace in the pages of a book

than in the person sitting next to me.

My most consuming:

being too busy—not busy enough actually;

I always have things to do, rarely things

that are done.

My most comforting: constantly listening to music,

suffocating my thoughts with tunes

easier to sing than my own.

I sin in wanting to walk out of the classroom,

exit the building, leave this life, teleport

back into my warm, inviting bed.

I confess I do everything right in my head.

My sin is bleeding for seven days 

and seven nights, and feeling

like I have to hide

it from the world, though the world

taught me to do it.

Another: I dwell in the memory

of that windy winter day

when I said that thing to that woman

when I should have said the other thing and not

the thing that I did say, and I remember

it while lying in bed,

keeping me from sleep.

My sin is wanting to hear

from my mother as much as my father.

I pray to her although

I am told not to.

My sin is having sex with the lights on.

My most upsetting: getting stuck places—

in a web,

on the couch,

behind his shoulder,

under a blanket,

above someone else,

within a state of mind

—and not knowing how to get myself out.

My foundational sin

is thinking I am the only

irreparably broken soul,

and my only reply:

the whirling wind from the wing

of a hummingbird, carrying a whisper,

a question: why?