confessional 

no one knew where they came from.
the little wooden rooms on every corner
in the city. confessionals with their 
hungry doors. when i was a girl
i used to confess to the same thing
every single time. "i didn't listen
to my parents." i wasn't even sure
if that was true but it seemed like 
the least embarrassing sin to admit.
the priest had paper-looking skin 
& the same soft cough each time. 
he would wipe his mouth with a napkin. 
we sat across a wobbly table. his glasses
on the tip of his nose. of course people
could not resist them. the rooms.
their butterfly tongues. the need to tell
someone what you have done. i have
gotten better at digging a pit in myself.
keeping the sins like fine china.
look, don't touch. we lost our bones
for this. i try to avoid them but everyone
was talking about confession. they were
gushing, saying, "i have never
felt so clean." it never did that for me.
i remember wondering if i had done it 
wrong. searching my body. all the weight 
my shiny guilts still there, unmoved.
i said twice the amount of hail marys 
the priest told me to do. penance is a shifting
place. not an achievement but a staircase
with a drop-off at the top.
some people had conspiracy theories 
about the confessionals. that they were
a government spy tactic. that maybe
they were using our sins to make a monster.
we never learned an answer. instead,
they left one day. years later they found
their doors in the river. a man drowned
diving in to try to open it as if the room
would still be there waiting for
his next confession. i was taught that
even if you forgot to say all your sins that they
would all be forgiven after the sacrament. 
i have to admit i still crave it. the release
that never came. i think i might 
have felt it once. not in a confessional
from the church or the sidewalk. instead,
i once slept on a roof. the sky like 
a tabernacle. the stars each confessed to me
all they had done. blood & wild wounds. 
we dazzled raw in the dark.