ManicDDaily

My Inner Confessional – If Its Walls Could Talk

If walls would say what they should–I do not mean
if walls would just stick
to the script, but rather

if walls would speak
what was in their hearts, that is,
their I-beams, that is,
the borne cross of inner
rebar and all that zig-zag
of wood-should–

that is, if walls would say aloud
what they whisper
into their pillars,
these walls
could not help but speak
of forgiveness,

for these walls, whatever you want to say,
about their speech, are per force
good listeners,
and no wall listening to even my faked

remorse
could mistake the sadness
behind all that sinning and sensed
sinning–

(So, maybe the walls I like to imagine
are softer than the walls
of the archetypical confessional–
mine having been weakened
by an awful lot of headbanging–)

my walls, if I would but cede them words,
would say some wall-talk equivalent of
the laying on of hands
(you know, wall hands)–

I can still feel that cool plaster, when, as a child,
I ran my feet up up the stretched expanse
at the side of my mother’s bed; it was like
the soothing
of my aching head,
only she’d be sleeping then, her arms about
her middle,
and it was, actually, well
a wall.

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15th drafty poem for April, National Poetry Month.  I wrote this one for Mama Zen’s prompt on Real Toads about if walls could talk.  Pic was posted by MZ–not sure it equates to my “inner confessional” but close enough.