Confession

You lower your voice, it slows right down like treacle, you hesitate and make soft inarticulate sounds into the silence, swallowing, licking your lips, trying to find a way to form the thoughts into words that will somehow make it less difficult. I know you are embarrassed, I know this is hard for you.

I wait.

You tell me in snippets, I listen as you struggle with the sentences, broken and disjointed, they are reluctant to leave your mouth, stumbling over your tongue, hiding behind your teeth before they are forced out one letter at a time hanging in the air, swollen and ripe with shame and guilt and sweet, oh my god, so sweet and wet and sticky entering me and clinging to the edges.

‘It’s ok, baby’, I whisper, ‘it’s ok…’ and you know it is, truly, it’s ok.