11. Guilt
I never follow through with
anything I say I’ll do
ever since you taught me how
to leave.
I used to be loyal, to the point
of foolery
they say you treat the way you’re treated
and since you never followed through
a demon voice inside my head
lets my responsibilities slip away into
oblivion.
alarms don’t startle me,
but I wake again and again
for hours all night long
gnawing thoughts that
eat away at my morality
find their dinner in my qualms
have brunch by frying my subconscious
like eggs
a conscience isn’t an easy thing to shake.
I can shove it in the glovebox of my beat-up-bumper car
but it shows up at my bedroom
door at midnight
wakes me roughly by the hair
spews a list of my wrongdoings
in poetry or prose so
they sound more sophisticated
but the pretty words just mask
the guilt I feel.
my conscience lives in my closet.
I leave it blankets and crumbs
but it’s not too grateful
it holds me to standards
I can’t keep
can’t provide it with steak and tiramisu
every night
or a king-sized bed
I’m not an angel, no matter
how hard I pretend to be.
whispers sound like screams in
the deadliest of nights
my conscience has a gravel voice
that cuts me like ice and fire all at once
painting visions in my mind
of past wrongs I never righted
that strangle me when I’m asleep
so I wake up gasping
even in my dreams
rolling around in the back of a car with
him who never thought I was enough, even so
stealing money from my dad’s rusty piggy bank
when I was a little girl
making scathing remarks about my peers
who are just ordinary people
not wonderful musicians,
but worthy people, still
never giving money to the beggars
at the interstate exits
spending days on Netflix
when I should be writing,
or loving
or just being
the time that I scraped a truck
pulling out of a pediatric parking lot
and didn’t stop to leave a note
the inexplicable feeling that
I’m to blame for every friendship
that went down in flames
my conscience lifts with bony fingers
each thought like jagged rocks
and piles them in my bed
I’m surrounded
soon my pillows turn to rocks, too, and
I can’t sleep.