confession
adapted from Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire
once upon a time I touched you,
the skin between your
close-cropped hair and your collar
I remember the surprise, my fingers there
fixated, this was the usual ritual
of our greeting but I slipped
or did I just shift, I can own this
if you give me some time to explain
I had promised myself that this time,
I would outsmart your magnetic tang
I would tell you to leave the door open
instead of willing you to pull it closed
if I had to give up my secrets
for all your cynical inspection,
I wanted at least to be the world for you
while you shook my feelings out
like so many grains of sand,
and I wanted to cling to you
the space between your words
where I might pretend your curiosity was care
but you are a man and I drank
the potion of your devotion until I
no longer knew how to wake without it
and you would no longer permit that, anyway
I didn’t understand dissonance, then,
but I felt it all the same,
when I wanted you to tell me I was good
and you told me to stop overthinking
I remember when I was small, and older too
all I wanted was to be beautiful
not for beauty itself, but
for the easier existence it afforded
“I am grateful to have been pretty,”
my mother always said, an acknowledgement
I didn’t double guess until
it began to double cross me.
Once upon a time, you touched me
and after years of yearning,
I wished I were as ugly as a harpy
that you would just let me go.
Monica Deck is an author, recurve archer, and sometimes project manager. She is an MFA candidate specializing in creative nonfiction and narrative medicine. Poetry is her first and favorite love.
