who do you confess to when you don't believe in god?

I used to think I knew the sight of my soul--
Filmy thin and white,
A dryer sheet
Delicate and quivering, hovering
In the space between either side of my rib cage
I used to feel its horror when I sinned
Could see the flecks of dirt blemish the pale the way asphalt stains the snow
I used to apologize and could feel it nod:  abashed, at the mercy of
One monstrous human person.

As of late, I am not so certain--
There has always been a stronger tug
A ghost behind the sheet, biding
And now, where the forest meets the sea,
Where the high and the hard collide and leave you wretched,
I feel it with tendrils through my chest, in my limbs
Woven through my spine, a thorned morning glory
Nesting around my brain as a cliff bird
Beating its feet on the dirt, grasping onto branches, howling, gasping
A will-o'-the-wisp, a wraith
A mouse, a bear
Vast, so very vast
Thriving, having come so far through the trees
That at last it can taste the sunlight
Just behind the canopy
And trembles with fear and delight.

heavy coastal mind

about the mist
how empty it is, like
a shroud over a body resurrected
you could release all your whispers
in a scream, and have it
rise through the great expanse
invisible immediately
soaring like a crow
like a curse
like a treefall

or is it full
is it heavy, potent
like a field full of bodies covered over
tenderly by the bobbing flowers
all the flaws of thousand lives
become granules in the soil
moist and cold and breathing
we are cold and breathing
the waves fold in on themselves
again, again, again

damn it's been a minute

i was peeling an orange

my whole body shook

how weak have i become,

subsisting on mist—

a dissatisfied triangle

a different kind of misery