A Love Letter to the Conscience

I have been kept a prisoner,
a prisoner of being alive,
locked within the heart of my own self,
in the shame of saying: I love you,
of crying out:
I am human,
proud of my own truth,
disgusted by your shattered scale
of justice.

I am not ashamed of my own face,
I am ashamed of a faceless soul.
I do not hide from the nakedness
of my own David,
from the rawness of desire,
from the bright allure of life.

I am not ashamed of looking at beauty,
I am ashamed of failing to recognize it.

I am not ashamed of pleasure,
if it is true, if it is real,
if it breaks no heart,
if it is born of love,
if it crushes no innocent,
if it wields no dagger from behind,
if its sweetness, like honey,
does not rot the teeth of the soul.

I am ashamed of my own fear,
and of your shamelessness.

I am not ashamed of poverty,
but of the amnesia of truth
in the conscience of greed.

I am not ashamed of the divine apple
I stole out of hunger,
not of the suit worn for vanity,
but of those who steal the apple of our fullness,
who hoard the beauty of our world
in their baskets of ugliness.

I am ashamed that I might have broken
the innocent heart of a child,
that I might have trampled purity
beneath the chaos of these virtual moments,
that I might have silenced
the green whisper of friendship’s leaves
beneath the rush
of indifferent passersby.

I am ashamed
that perhaps you once asked me something,
and though I knew the answer,
I did not speak.

I am ashamed of the weight of apathy
resting on the shoulders of my conscience,
that I may have forgotten kindness
in fleeting moments,
forgotten to open the doors of my smile to you,
to laugh in your laughter,
to burn in your tears.

That if your true heart ever longed for something,
I might have carelessly forgotten it.

That I may have sought perfection
not where you were,
but where I imagined it to be.