confession

& when my father tells me he’s waiting between the salt and the wound, he’s telling the truth, but whenever the phone rings & it’s him I am reminded of when cuts bloomed red against my skin like rows of crops, a teenage anguish. I made an appointment at a mental institution for the poor and took up smoking in the interim. once, he called and told me about the time he had an affair & I asked two questions, if the woman was white & if I had met her. he said I don’t understand why that matters. the answer to both was yes. he sounded rushed, as if I were a church & he only wanted an instant of absolution, to rip the cloth from the arm & find that something new and clean had grown beneath it. I hung up the phone & counted in the grooves of my hand how often “I’m sorry” is really a question: I too have longed for absolution, relentlessly, wondering if there’s someplace I can go to atone for the texture of my hair, tearing

as if I have ever set foot in a church. but not knowing god isn’t the same as not wanting, not always. shove one foot in the river and let the skin pull. to stare at the current for long enough is to allow the ground to take on the same rush as the water & the apex of the exercise is the moment when the body experiences itself in motion and absolute stillness. I wanted there to be a body of water capable of absolving me when I whispered to it that my deepest fear is learning my mother drinks herself to sleep because I am less likely to be shot than her youngest child, but now that I know it started with a woman whiter, even, than me, I am neither stilled nor forgiven because when baby brother called to ask what he was supposed to do I told him I don’t know & when I hung up the phone I went to the porch to offer what was left of me to the sun.