Right-Handed Adultery

There I go again, betraying your trust. The shame is a choking fog. I swear up and down that this is the last time, but I know the lie by its face- a smirking, arrogant visage.

I wash the shame from my hands and watch the suds circle the drain. In the moment the excuses are so clarifying and so right. I'm not getting the attention I deserve! You reject me again and again. I know I'm not very good-looking. I don't like to exercise. I clench the fat around my belly, shake the mass until everything shakes mockingly at me in the mirror. I don't trust myself.

I can already feel the urge overtaking me again. It's like a silken-robed seductress wrapping itself around my shoulders. Her hands glide down my collarbone and linger below my adams apple. They skate down the valley of my chest and come to rest. Bestowing heat, they drive my inhibitions to their caverns and bunkers. The sound of their retreat echoes off the tiles and drowns out the running water.

I find the silken temptress a place to stay in the darkest parts of my mind, where she can manifest another pleasant dream for me to conjure when next I'm feeling weak. When next I'm feeling unloved. My right hand betrays my beating left chest. I leave the ring on the shelf. My eyes fall as I dry my hands and shake my head frantically. "You are faithless"

What will be the next trigger? Even if I avoid the obvious haunts of temptation, an errant post, most certainly an advertisement, tailored to my filthy frame like a custom suit. A special-ordered corsage pinned upon my bare chest while I try to deny I earned every petal. The blood runs down my navel and I think "Good, well earned.".

I climb back into bed and put an arm around to, gently. I try not to wake you up, but you ask me sleepily:

"Where did you go?"

"To the bathroom. Upset stomach"

You mumble in assent, already back asleep. Your trust is like a sour plum, or a caustic silver tincture, I cannot rest. I stare into the inky room, the shame begins to fade. Justification covers me as surely as the comforter, and regret is smothered in its folds. Numbness creeps in while consciousness fades out.

I don't hate myself as much in the morning, But before the day is long and old, the old familiar itch troubles my palm. My gut keens and tugs, a need yowls inside like a wildcat in a trap. With a chuckle I introspect that the compulsion is more like a blaze than like an animal. The more you feed it, the greater its appetite. And it never rests. Lust doesn't care about raising a family. Reducing femininity to the raw materials of your satisfaction doesn't do a thing to foster love.

"Faithless vow-breaker" I mumble to the mirror as I watch the suds circle the drain again. If Adonai could see me now- of course He CAN see me now, how foolish. God, my father in heaven, look at your despicable son. Look at how I mistreat your daughters. You wrought my mouth to weave scarves of gold for their shoulders with my words and my prose. Instead my hands are around their necks, contorting them in my mind into positions of indecent servitude. How can you allow me to claim your daughter, my wife, for my own while I revile her kin with my greedy, slobbering beast of a heart? Ravenous and insatiable, I twist away, shaking the water from my treacherous hands.

I start over again. Vow and promise. Disbelief. Doubt. Sin.

God forgive me.