Drafty Eternity

1. I go to confession not to absolve my sins, but to read them; to participate in ritual, to kneel, to give myself in utterance 2. I gesture the cross in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost 3. The priest and I—that is, the little father and I—have once met outside that dark booth in our corner of the universe. He assured me that I am not the only atheist who believes in hell. I call him Father, though we will not exchange names 4. I gesture the cross in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost 5. To scratch out your point-counterpoint from the flesh horizon is the solipsism we find the most accommodating 6. Give me power to say I am nothing, the nothing I am, in a calculated chiasmus balancing of the scales: I/I 7. “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” or, equally insufficient, “Sleep green colorless furiously ideas”. This is what I think to him, the Father at large who sees in secret, who knows in secret. Sleep green colorless puzzle in the knowledge of our nocturnal communication, my heaviest of words that pin me in dream empires, hanging from inverted castles on the roof of hell (with towers and steeples for stalactites) 8. I gesture the cross