A Multitude of Sins

[tectak]

I cannot handle dead bodies since
I had to shave that lifeless face
and scrape off sins like blades of glass,
like chalk on a board, as if death squeaked
through rotten teeth and hollow cheeks. Unreservedly excelent stuff.If the reader has no first hand knowledge of what you are taliking about, he, like me, will be drawn right in. VG opener.

Talking is easier.
Do you remember the plant
in the top-floor lounge
that we both so heartily hated?
I never did find out its name.
For me it was merely ugly; for you
those large waxy leaves were its ears,
leaning in closer to steal your secrets,
absorbing smoke and speech.

I sit beside it now.
The old place is closed down, supplanted
by Home Treatment, Star Workers
and Voluntary Organisations.
The staff were left to rehabilitate
unwanted items of furniture:
my wife took a shine to a table, chairs
and this antiquated listening device.

I sit beside it now as your tales disturb me - Though deliberately deliberate, the repetition of "I sit beside it now" is not a success. Possibly made worse by the use of "as". Meaning concurrently or conditionally? A little shaky, but just a little.
how your father died too early,
how wicked and unworthy you were,
how little you desired or deserved to live;
your refusal to take yes for an answer. It is hard to punctuate this effectively and so you chose not to. You may be right, though it pains me to say it!

Like a priest inside a confessional
I asked you to itemise your sins,
so I could tick them off a list:
schoolboy misdemeanours
of tuppenny ha’penny pettiness –
not the stuff of formal therapies!
Hardly hanging offences, I stated,
you must be a saint
or simply don’t get out very much -
waiting for the laughed response.
Waiting…

Now I see how the brown leather belt
we bought together, that you haggled over
with the market trader, is wrapped around
the bathroom door handle
and cuts your neck purple, the angle
of your purple shoulders, veins bulging
purple, eyes popping purple
for five or six days on life support;
pleading for an end to purple, waiting
for consensus to gather and grow
as thick and long as your beard.

A truly intimate and stirring read. This is as good as it gets in this kind of domestic environment. I can read this often but I will still enjoy it as though it is a first read. There is a sense of betrayal which I cannot finger, particularly as there is a character switch in the last line. Normally, I would ask for an explanation, but in this case not knowing is surel better than knowing
Best,
tectak