Intimacies

​You tell me you will skin
the outer layer I know, one day, so I can see
you fully exposed.

But I am squeamish.
I would rather not see you bleeding and raw.

I am afraid of what lurks
so near the surface. What trauma
has shaped your desires and now demands
acceptance instead of healing?

I am not equipped to share those sorrows
and I won’t condone your errors.
The kind of intimacy
you crave appalls

me. I am no priest,
ordained to bestow absolution
upon the penitent in the confessional.
I would rather not know these sins
that would shock

me. Must we bare everything?
Going beyond marital nakedness
until every shameful memory
is known and passed between
us like something to covet
instead of the grenade
it really is with its pin pulled.

My own secrets, I hide.
Don’t ask me to speak
of them to you. No. They are mine
to bury deep or burn.

I must have buried
them because you say I am cold.

Hestia is a writer who grew up in England and moved to Middle Tennessee for love. In the pages of her poems, Hestia examines and reckons with the choices she has made as a wife and mother over the last three decades.