Sins Confessed

I learned young.
Years of church
and nuns in
Catholic school
taught me
where the line was and
I never crossed it.
At least not that
I’d ever
admit to.
I was always
a good girl
who occasionally did
bad things.

I rolled up my skirt
and opened
the top three buttons
of my uniform blouse
and scrunched down
my socks.

I did what I could.
I crept toward the line
that I couldn’t cross
wouldn’t cross
until the sin was
sanctioned,
allowed and
encouraged.

I sinned
on my knees.
So I could pray
for forgiveness
while I was
enjoying the sin.

I would
indulge my boyfriends’
god given needs
in the backseats of cars
and in the corners of
dark basements.

But only to the
point of purgatory,
never enough
for satan to
steal my sinful soul.
And I didn’t care
that I could literally
catch hell for it.

And then
the day came
when the sacrament
erased the sin,
not only allowing me
but encouraging me to
fuck my way
straight across the line.

I no longer
needed to
go home after sinning
and pray to
Mary Magdalene
to intercede for me
until I chose to
sin yet again.

I had a ring on my finger
a marital bed
and no threat of sin
hanging over my head.

The thrill
was gone
for both of us.

So I began
to sin in the dark
after he
rolled off of me and
fell asleep.

I began to sin
in our bed alone
while he “worked” late
night after night.
He had his own
sins
to enjoy and
they didn’t
include
me.

Inevitably
I was thrust into
broken vows,
and we parted
long before
death did us part.
I started to flirt with
the bad girl
I always wanted to be.

I began to allow
sinful sounds to
fall from my lips
in the dark
like secrets whispered,
a joyful confession of sins
I chose to commit
again and again.

I learned that
even good people
are not always good.
The best people
need some bad
to keep them balanced,
to keep them sane.

I figured out
what sins
I could get away with,
how to walk the line.
how to take
or give
what others are
too selfish
or lazy
or unskilled
to bother with
without hurting anyone
enough
for it to matter.

I kind of wish
I’d been a bad girl
all along.
Being a good girl
was fucking boring.
I’ve realized that
good girls are the reason
boys needed bad girls.
They need
the girls they bring home
to their mothers
and the girls they
tell their fathers
they want to fuck.

I can still be a good girl
when I choose to be.
when I want to be.
when it serves a purpose but
the line between being
a good girl and
a bad girl has become
blurred to the point that
I sometimes trip over it
sometimes skip over it
usually walk right past it
without giving a shit
that it was there.

So I continue
to sin
sometimes in the dark
sometimes in the light,
sometimes alone and
sometimes not,
gasping god’s name in vain,
and knowing,
with complete joy,
I’ll never be the good girl
a boy wants to
bring home to his mother
ever again.