Confessions

by Megan Gates

September 29, 2009

It’s time once again to confess your secrets. Secrets you wear only for
yourself in the mirror in dim light behind curtains. Secrets of things inherent,
things unsaid. Guilts and sins and dare-I-say betrayals. They dangle next to my
heart like a tarnished silver locket I can never take off, begging deep apologies
that I won’t give.

Your words make no sense to me anymore. Those intrepid strokes on a silly and
impressionable heart are now laughable. They are nothing but ethereal dust marks on
an old highway of my memory.

You scrambled my insides and casually walked away while I gasped and stared at my
reflection in the mirror, trying to recognize myself, trying to catch my breath.
I’ve checked the mirror for weeks now and continue to gaze back as a stranger. It’s
unkind to leave me this way; nothing of myself but bits of a moment I was part of
for a while.

So consider this my first confession. I’ve found you.

But I’ve been unkind. Careless. I’ve stood under eaves of unfamiliar houses
listening to the low music inside, desperately wanting to go in. I have woken up
with strangers, but none stranger than myself. I have spoken in tongues and crawled
in the mud. I’ve wrestled with my own conscience and purposefully let it win. I
refuse to see things in black and white. I’ve dared, kissed, pushed the limits,
crushed a cigarette into the ground and left with him. I’ve been begged, pleaded and
sold. I’ve given up on you, lost you, found you, lost you and then watched you walk
into the room and disappear into the light of atoms. I’ve seen through you so many
times its embarrassing. I’ve smashed berries on my lips and pretended I was a May
Queen. You’ve been my lover in my dreams, meeting me under purpled rain clouds and
in dark corners of Blues clubs. I have satiated lusts with one hushed word whispered
with heat on my neck. I’ve returned gazes and rejected my closeted fears. I’ve pick
pocketed emotions and stolen tears from you in giant sacks. I have a criminal record
two days long. I’ve suffered your politics with a cracked, feigned smile and have
seen you sway back and forth, like a tire swing crossing a line in the sand. I
haven’t always been honest. I’ve held back tomes of sentences meant for you, pushed
them from my lips down into my toes until they twitched and yearned and forced me to
run. I painted the walls of my heart in a glossy black after you left for the first
time. Added a new coat each time you left after that.

And though the paint is starting to chip again, I am too tired to touch it up.

Forgive me father for I have sinned. It’s been sixteen months, nine days, and twelve
hours since my last confession.

I confess. I’ve lost you.

I’ve shrunken your memory down to a dime-sized dollop–an agreeable spoonful so it’s
easier to swallow. Lately I’ve been wandering around my apartment thinking “these
spaces used to be cozier”, only it’s not that the spaces have grown bigger, it’s
just that there is one less ghost haunting its halls. I have so many regrets that
I’ve started collecting the inked up scraps of paper that litter my bedroom,
bathroom, purse, car, and have laid them to rest in a shiny pink jar atop my writing
desk. Yesterday, my regrets pulled me out of the shower to scribble another thought.
Dripping wet I scurried from my bathroom to my bedroom to file it away. By the time
I returned, I’d thought of another. There will always be dusky plumes of old desire.
I drag my baggage around with me ceremoniously, draping it tenderly over my latest
conquest as if wearing it would make him more appealing. I have rendered this habit
useless and sardonic, but I can’t help it. At quiet moments in my day I whisper kind
words into the air to make others more forgiving of you. Of me. Of the fall of us.
I’ve stolen memories from you in giant sacks, rationing them like scraps of food
that will never satiate. I stash them in my closet along with bent photos and ticket
stubs from a dusty, criminal past. I’ve spent the last three weeks with my
headphones on, shouting out foreign phrases and sounds, trying to teach myself the
language of courage. Only, it comes out in broken words and no one can understand
me. Your memory flashes in my mind simultaneously with the beat of my heart. I’ve
spent hours at my kitchen table doing breathing exercises to slow its pace. Now I
only think of you sixty-five times per minute.

I find myself staring down at my palms, splotched with that familiar, fresh black
paint I’ve spent all afternoon trying to rub off. I am considering sending you my
language tapes. Perhaps they’ll do you some good where I have failed.

And although I confess all of this to you now, I know for sure you won’t hear it.

Megan Gates
writes here.