Wash

When you told me you were leaving me and going to wash all your sins away, I felt myself flow away from you and swirl into the dark drain where dirt goes and darkness stays and no one knows what the hell happens down there. 

I made myself your filth.

And as you washed yourself clean, all that emerged, was the dirt of me and the absolution of you. 

I should have wrapped myself in the ugliness of undesirability so that you would not have stood up to greet me. 

Instead, I too, filled with my longing for the unknown and forbidden, came to you and opened myself to you so that our dirtiness merged into one big sensational mess. 

While I slept my troubled sleep, you woke up. And in my dream I felt the swirl of the water and pull of the drain, even as I heard the rain of your shower. 

I came to in the flood of our sins, of which I had become the sole owner.

It is a miracle that I did not drown in the depths of your blame. 

And what of me?

Where is my forgiveness for the innocence I lost? I thought we were in this forbidden together. 

Why then is my nose the only one that can smell the stench of our sins? 

Why do the shadows follow me for what was a couple’s act? 

Why are you standing there, clothed in white and surrounded by second chances? 

We fell together, but society has lifted you up and held me down. 

You washed yourself of me and then they whipped me. 

I fainted and woke up in the pain of your abandonment.

And the shame of my sins.

At this point, I have become a mangled, magnificent mess. 

And for the first time I see my reflection

Now it all makes sense. 

The flood, a bath. 

The darkness, a covering

The beating, the forging

And me - not pure white, but crimson with life

Filled with love, and satisfied with the new found knowledge of myself.