CONFESSIONS

I wanted to go there but I can’t remember—to be with someone lost in the field of wildflowers—that disappeared when I touched a memory that confused the horizon.

The address of the doctor who promised not to cure me but to hide the symptoms—humanize me—was on a paper I lost when I tried to shuffle the lost bits in order, remove the jokers from the deck—forecast the future with stones.

There was a discombobulation of format—the margins ate what I was trying to explain—those hours that blurred the green of early summer.  

I didn’t mean to ruin your parade of secrets by dislocating the afternoon, burying your toy soldiers in dust after you shrouded each in a beautiful sentence.

I couldn’t remember—the name of the song I wanted to hear on the radio while I drove chasing dusk beyond the tallest pines, rotting barns, and small houses.

Because my brain couldn’t connect the dots it used to—and the notes fell off the page before reaching my mouth, weakened from not speaking—I hinged twilight with a paper bag of confetti, jilted syllables.

My hands cracked even after the singing that couldn’t will away the poison I touched while cutting down the pink and magenta peonies I was to bring someone like you—that wilted in the car while I grocery shopped for silence.

I spotted you in the shadows of your poem—and the day before with your flashlight at night between stanzas—trying to illuminate past the bookends of Sunday to Saturday.

I couldn’t say you were afraid with certainty—with the clarity of one walking to an altar built of believed promises.

The movie I was making to excise unpleasant emotions, offer catharsis—eluded.

It was supposed to be in the far distance of old black and white movies and photographs—but kept jumping into color.

Shades of red—fallen rose petals that filled the screen with silk, the cardinal dead in my hand that bled red even after burial, my misplaced, surfacing exasperation–orange embers that burned past February.

Resilient stigmas imbued the purple of bruises, small violets that grew into dark irises, fading into blunted fuchsia.

I wanted to tell you—we could exchange shoes, hats, faces—in the film of forgetting—for a day, maybe a week—that the disappearance didn’t have to hurt so much—that we’ll float this time instead of drown.

There was a melody that punctuated the soundtrack—what we used to want against dominos falling with civilization’s house of cards—the first thought on the breath defined by dreaming.

Thoughts were tangled in my hair I was afraid to wash—that I would lose myself in a painful refrain; the humbling—an avalanche—beyond any first responders.

It’s been so long without a pen or keyboard—my fingers have gone idle with something like melancholy.

I was meaning to write an explication of the days of invisibility—how I stayed up to save myself from falling.

Nauseated from caffeine, I walked a mile just as the birds began singing to usher daylight—to the blind widow’s house to read her love sonnets—but she didn’t recognize my voice and wouldn’t open the door.

I was on my way somewhere else—somewhere I can’t remember—to join a crowd of bystanders, to blend in and not be the subject anymore—

because some meanings were self-fabricated, embroidered (in) syntax—differential, at best—and it looked like rain.

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8 Responses to CONFESSIONS

  1. Thom says:

    Really good to see you writing again. This one is excellent.

  2. Richard Wayne Horton says:

    The thing you do. It’s all through this one.

  3. Kat says:

    Beautiful revelatory writing.

  4. Myke Todd says:

    Riffing Krysia’s Confessions

    If this was a game of chess, you would be blocked at every turn.
    If this was a game of chance, you would be left alone to yearn.
    Rules of contests, were not written this way,
    but since you are here, you might as well play.
    Keeping score, they will implore; when asked, you may discern.

    Michael Todd (2021)

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