I Wasn't Bluffing

 

I Wasn’t Bluffing

(“But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to watch him baptize, he denounced them…’Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God.’” Matthew 3:7a,8)

I wasn’t bluffing, I meant what I said;
so you’ve seen my soul, you’ve seen the hole in it.
If my scars were human (I suspect they are)
then blades of time and space intersected in the
place my elbow connected with the foam pillow afire
from sitting on the floor furnace vent. Did you see me shake
the flames out and the way the plastic flew like wildfire
and landed on the inside of my arm to char and boil a
silver dollar size burn on my arm. I was 13 and the scar
turned purple every time I went swimming for five years after.

So, I overheard the backstage talk that reasoned away the
unachievable mandates (we won’t wear a mask, but we’ll make you
change your gender), and wrestled with the water that never
washed me clean of
the demeaning stain of
deserving the pain of
the everlasting flames of
hell or god’s gory torture.

I would repent if only you will.
I will fall on my knees if you will once
beg pretty please the way that I did.
I will follow you into the river if you will
trade in your rolling eyes
take back your pious lies
and simply ask in words more sackcloth than satin,
“How did we offend?” Because you were the ones that had us
gathered around tables,
bemoaning the porn addiction among the faithful.
But I knew you had not spoken truth,
and had set traps to get confessions that, many times,
had already freely been given.

I wasn’t bluffing, I meant what I said;
you never saw my soul, and you invented its abyss.
My scars were human and I was left to find deserts
in the ocean.
I still am adrift in lonely, so alone I am
weightless.

 

I would repent, but will never give my confession again.