Confession

Graphics by Justine Arriola

Ginoo, may I have a moment of your time?

There is something I wish to tell you if you’d allow me to speak freely. I’m sure there’d been myriads of people who laid their hearts at your feet, and I am only adding myself to the long line of devotees, but I am not asking you to answer my confession. I only ask for you to listen.

When you said that you could no longer feel anything in your chest as a consequence of offering your heart to the Altar of All, I wondered, If I laid the warmth of my hand on your chest, would you be numb to it?

I wondered if you still ached for the things you can’t have.

I wondered how you’d know that you’ve fallen if you cannot feel your heart pounding in your chest?

I wondered how I would know if you yearn for me as well if I could not feel the racing of your pulse every time we touch.

I wondered so many things about you, yet none of them truly mattered.

Thoughts of you have plagued my mind, not of the sensations you can no longer experience but of the ones you inflict.

I feel warmth for you.

I feel my heart flutter for you.

I ache— I ache for you in your presence and even more so in your absence.

You eviscerate me through your tenderness as I kneel for you with my hands clasped to my chest.

Ginoo, I do not have an altar to offer my heart and love to you as a penitent devotee, but it is yours. My love, my devotion, my violence. It is yours.

I never truly understood devotion, but ever since I met you, You could have my heart, and I would break it for you.