True Confessions — by James Richardson

In my unwritten novel we would hear
the evening paper, blunt on the door,
untuck for the wind's disassembly
page after page in bottomless recession.

We'd be exes perhaps, chapters of absence
having slipped us from old explanations
into something more comfortable:
stellar distance. But you know how it was.

Pairing truths, we leveled with each other.
I don't remember any of the facts,
not one—just your wrist's occasional
so-what, like the turning of a page.

In love, or less, unsaying hands
are freer and more certain than our hold
on exactly what the real secrets are.
Not the day but its reticence endures.

For it's disquietingly easy to confess
fear and undistinguished shame,
as if they hadn't quite happened to us,
but nearby, like accidents, or rain.