Confessions by SR Inciardi

CONFESSIONS
 
The pages are dotted by camouflaged confessions 
in black ink like blackened darkness, 
past the reaches of quieted streetlamps 
and the empty calls from birds in the moment, 
yet oddly settling the mind, flipped through 
with snippets of light caught in each instant—
past tense becoming present language 
combining with softer music, air exhaled 
with each turned page, and when each page settles, 
it’s as if a leaf floating to rest, its jagged edges 
smoothed to finish a dream or relive a past—
as if reading what’s written 
could now speak to the rest of my life. 
But once a certain word count is passed, 
there’s so little it can do, reading about who I was then 
and in a second, gone-on to now 
often with empty hands: moments I’d take back, 
the light I thought I saw yet remains unseen, 
the whitened pages of nothing left, 
the aches in the lost print, the fear 
of what will be replayed or come next     
isolated     exhausted     but curiously jumping ahead 
in the light in another early morning.