i confessed my sins, and look where it brought us
after years in the catholic church
spines ramrod straight and hands clasped in prayer
your sworn chastity after we lost the love of our life
clench your jaw shut, voice and empty void of intimacy

sunlight, fractured through the kaleidoscope of stained glass
dusty windows, dusty air filled with the thick scent
of lilies from the morning service.
you always did like the evenings
but you love our after hours, more.

my attention wanders
the priest's empty sermon is full of sh..
resisting temptation ? those words echo
mockingly in my ears.
how lovely !

i wore the satin dress you love
the one i shouldn't wear in public
because it barely meets the church's requirements
but you'd do anything to see the silhouette of my body
the muted lavender draping over my frame like water

ever attuned to me, your gaze falters
your eyes meet mine in gentle inquiry.
'i have a weird fixation with that dress...'
the satin was so gorgeously draped on me
'i want to own her..'

the soft light caught the curve of my neck
my head bowed in mindless prayer
it stirs a disquieting warmth within your *****
a sensation wholly inappropriate for your daughter
'forget about it, forget about it, forget about...'

shake the feeling
let it flee from your mind
but you can't help the urge to pull me into your lap
just to... feel me in your space.
if she couldn't be a part of him, he'd settle for her being on top.

his attention has always conjured a different feeling in me
i had to have been misinterpreting it,
but was i really ?
the way he caressed my hips and thighs when he could,
whispering sweet nothings in my ear

these thoughts, these sinful
sinful
thoughts..
they can't be one sided !
can they ?

the focus on faith
always had me feeling
as if we lacked emotional intimacy.
so my mind
sought it in other areas.

the drive home was quiet
with the prospect of our self-conducted confessional
looming over her in the NSX-R
as a judgement of my own actions.
i dreaded what was to come.

i know you notice my silence
i hear your hands clench the leather
your eyes flickering towards me,
my frame against the blurred cityscape
'what could she possibly be stressing over ?'

our home, modest, but meticulously kept
i hear you move with the usual quiet efficiency
i trail, i trail, i trail
unease burgeoning with every fleeting moment
the low clinks of cutlery do nothing to soothe my frayed nerves.

"so pretty..."
'did i say that out loud ?'
yes, daddy, you did !
but my eyes are still glazed,
focused on nothing

you can't help it
the way my dress hung so elegantly on my pale body
my defined collarbone, and slim neck
just begging you
to pepper heated kissed to show 'affection'

you tell yourself
it's just a father's pride in her mother's beauty
but the treacherous voice
keeps telling you
it's something more. something dangerous.

you tell me i seem troubled
and you ask me what is wrong
your tone is laced with something slightly foreboding
"i have something i should tell you."
my cheeks flush. "don't worry. nothing's wrong, daddy. it's about me."

...

he sat closely beside me on the sofa,
taking my delicate hand in his.
he adores my slim features,
my pale skin
that he wanted to blemish so badly.

his touch, usually a source of reassurance,
now sent a confusing shiver through me.
his hands, strong and capable,
were one of the features i often found myself fixating on
during my forbidden twilight thoughts.

his demeanor was curious,
and he couldn’t help but imagine what i had to say.
“i’m listening, angel,”
he prompted,
his thumb gently stroking the back of her hand.

i finally met his eyes,
my own filled with a mixture
of shame and a desperate need for…
something i couldn’t quite articulate.
validation, maybe ?

the gaze you returned
was uncomfortable,
but i couldn’t look away.
“please, daddy–
don’t make me confess my sins.”

In sleet and rain of Edinburgh
a cathedral rises from the deeps.
The salt of sea and old coal blur
veil her face in grey-cast sheets.

On her western pediment
within tympanum carved of stone
sits Christ triumphant and in judgement
where he calls us all to atone.

I stand before him, my head bowed
as I contemplate our shared guilt,
with mea culpas weighing on my brow
for the follies fallen man has built.

And so we’re burning Eden down
with flaming swords that we still wield
as once vast forests shrink and brown
and fallow lie once verdant fields.

Where trees once stood, smokestacks rear
their heads belching fumes up high
and in the deeps, the oceansphere’s
no more a garden for octopi.

For in this our earthly commonweal
that was a gift that’s given free
we prove that purgatory’s real
because we ourselves have made it be.

A whisper came from the carved face
to walk into this stony womb
where colored light and incense trace
a path to overcome the gloom:

Forgiveness for our many faults
comes when we change our ways.
There in this temple’s holy vault
I vow to fight Eden’s decay.

In Edinburgh I found Eden
in a vision of what can be.
For we are by no means beaten
and we can do it, you and me.

Remember black winds of November nights,
rattle your bones, chill your marrow,
quiver time's arrow and rip the world's white
veil from a skeletal face. Throw
it. Watch it fold, caught on the cathedral,
high church of the ossified faithful,
whose whispered prayers will calcify us all.
Unveiled, the world is bones without a soul,
rattling as it grinds, creaking as it turns.
A flag flies / Calcium collects in urns.

i'm made of something stronger.
i may not be a saint,
but I am mighty.

i do not fear you.

In my eyes i see evil,
A window depicting
A devil beside me.

I couldn't see though him,
As i hurried through the rain.
His reflection stained dry
Just inside the glass.

A man slowly writhing,
tossing, and turning,
Tattered soaked clothing,
On a dampened cardboard bed,
On the wrong side of the glass.

There he suffers,
Feet from salvation,
My train station.

A shiver passes through me
As i enter this cathedral of a station,
Population: one bulletproof guard,
Ensuring that i am not bothered
By the sickening feeble,
****** and outside.
But that does bother me.

Is there no church
In this place of momentum,
On the greener side of the glass,
Where we do not stop moving?

‪Wistfulness is the state of my existence..constantly returning to the place I come from..always feeling like a soul floating on a star ceiling watching over my surroundings..blended in a distant place that doesn’t bend to the measure of time..in quiet detachment from the world true to my being..as realities shift condensing together at once..as if I already experienced reality in an incomprehensible, hypnotic stream away from my immediate present & all my five senses rendered surreal living in a constant dream..a concentrated flow to the center of my cerebrum..a view from the Rose window in the dark cathedral of my mind..where the tiny light particles in the sun beam passing through pulsate in my sight and the deep waves of silence echoing in the corners ring in my ear..where even darkness speaks dancing specs of iridescence..and colours weep intricate opaque gleams..concealed in an omnipotent and brimful beauty that passes never captured or understood..an unfathomed sacred language I can only feel..with fey farseeing  eyes and a tranquil faint smile..like a scenic sophist..where everything in a word has a world and weight as real as anything else I can overwhelmingly see & touch..and everything around me becomes one with my own soul..‬

my own importance is swallowed like a pill,
by the resonance of his voice,
vocabulary ****** dry and replaced with a sheen of the need to
stay so unbearably quiet.

i always want to waltz in open spaces,
feel the air rushing past my arms as i spin,
but walking into a house so white and so cold,
i feel like i have ignored the welcome mat at the door.

it's his alleged presence,
or maybe it's just my own scepticism acquiring the patina of caution.
i walk with soft slow steps as if not to wake the dead in the garden,
cut short the swirl of my movements,
replace air vents in cartilage joints with rocks or plaster.
am i even supposed to feel like a person in my own right?

i wish someone would drop a pin for me to assess the quiet,
but there is a soft small current of people feeling at home,
or the quiet and the cautious mixing in like a cavity in a set of white teeth.

when i step back out into the sun,
my lungs grow fuller with oxygen, the leaves appear greener and the sky is more vibrant.
i do not feel his eyes on me as much; or the weight of being contained.
perhaps he just wanted me to go home.