I think we are built to carry guilt:
Looped in the maze of a fingerprint
and whispered in an eager ear and
befallen from tips of tongues
and behind the glass of an iris and
sticky on the curve of a shoulder
and caged inside the chest.

It gathers and festers
—a wound.

You and I are made up of guilt:
of what you wished you did
and what you had not,
full of regrets and maybes
and most detrimental of all
—hope.

I think hope and guilt are one in the same:
to know that something could have gone another way
and you must live with that possibility.

I mourn so much. I hope just the same.
I will live with all the possibilities of heartbreak
—in hopes that I will
find love personified
in my bathroom and
I will lather my hands in soap, looking to cleanse
the skin they cannot reach alone

Take care,
Andre Kim Kessel