I avoid. It is the coldness of death. This is a confession.

I avoid transactions with the supernatural or existential. I live in this coldness. I don’t read poems. This is a confession.

I live in goddamned materialistic despondency. I force myself to interpret this despondency, this coldness, as a form of groundedness, realism. It is not. The greater reality is that I use this despondency to avoid yearning for anything beyond my own abilities, and limit myself again and again. This is a confession.

Because of this avoidance, this fake groundedness, I’m often afraid of making anything that doesn’t make money. I make when I know the return has some validation backing it — moolah or recognition. I’m not in want of either. But I have done this so sadly, so often. Charity is far and away, though I try. Kindness is dried and peeling, though I try. I try and try. I find myself here, instead. Arid and distant from my own heart. In materialistic despondency. This is a confession.

I contemplated leaving everything and starting over. This is a confession.

I contemplated that my creativity has left me, and that I’d have to start over with some new, unknown form of it. This is perhaps still true. This is also a confession.

I fail daily to stay in contact with people I care about. I avoid people like I avoid supernatural or existential experiences sometimes. This is a confession.

All experience is local, somewhere. I recognize this, but do not engage in my own localities, my own city and region. I find myself angry with Alabama, and the southeast, unnecessarily. Even if there are things to be angry at, I avoid engaging with it in any way salvific, any way worthy of the dignity of any space full of any people. I lend it little. I keep it small. I forget the anyness of it, the big-horse joy of variety. This is a confession.

I took two dogs to be killed in one year. One was M’s, an older dog at the end of its life. The other was a younger dog who had special needs. I feel this has hardened my heart even more to the spiritual, to the living and dying I avoid to know in myself, and so to creativity. This is a confession.

I don’t allow myself to miss anything. I stuff yearning down, down, down. I live too heavily in the present. It feels as cold as every avoidance. This is a confession.

I become strikingly angry at small accidents, like typos or miscommunications. I hold my cold self to red-hot standards. When no one is around, I scream things like Get It Right. This is a confession.

This, all of this, is simply a confession.

I can trust this confession. You can trust it.