Traveling Sins

Yours are not the only ones.
The small rosewood rooms are like coffins,
full of confessions, banal and badass,
a spilling place of truths
going back generations.

You can feel them when you enter,
a ghostly awareness that your sins
have far less power than you give them.
Yours are no worse than the others,
no less forgivable

The polished rosewood somehow does not make those sins more palatable
They are, no matter the scenery, artless.
wild things, better perhaps to release them outside
where there are horizons and skies for them to fly to,
never to haunt again, dissipated smoke,
and nothing more.

About this poem

We are often bad at forgiving, particularly forgiving ourselves. And so we carry a burden that punishes no one, except, of course, ourselves.

The picture was taken in Rome.

Tom