Some people never return
their parents’ haggard and beaten
voicemails – it’s been months – while
some drive drunk (and brag.) Some
forfeit to lust and sleep with a friend’s girlfriend
while some swerve toward the oblivious possum.
 
I do none of these things – well, maybe
one – but we all have ***** laundry.
Those little specters of intention
and actions not taken that eat at us
– some of us – like a consuming flame
blinding to its unfortunate kindling
while invisible to others.
 
And yet we worry.
 
That on judgment day he won’t
skim over the ****-stained briefs
that our secrets are scribbled on
our foreheads, or that other people
are actually people with lives
complex as ours and it’s wrong
******* them over like that.