Confession Draped in Fabric

Grief slithers around my throat, intestine-leash, tugging me through fluorescent cathedrals where mannequins kneel headless.
Mothballs cloud the lungs, ammonia blistering the nostrils, wire hangers scream their metallic hymns from rafters dripping rust.
Drawstrings cinch my calves, tug me deeper into aisles of polyester altars, silk crucifixes, denim flags tattered with spit.

Salt crust thickens my tongue as starch explodes in my belly, a morgue stretched taut with grease-prayers.
Forks nail silence to the plate, knives fold each bite into tombstones.
I chew armies, swallow shame, button my gut into a swollen sack leaking sutures.

Plastic coffins whisper from cardboard pulp, relics embalmed in shrink-wrap,
records cold as torsos,
DVDs stacked like gravestones, spines aligned in neat alphabetic decay.
Click—salvation folded in corrugated scripture.
Click—immortality delivered with free shipping.
Tracking numbers tattoo foreheads.
The chalice of Prime bleeds peanuts across living room carpet, styrofoam communion.

Hunger drills holes through marrow.
The wardrobe swells like a cancerous lung.
Specters rot unshipped in their boxes.

Two mannequins stand back-to-back in our bedroom, hips smoothed flat, nipples shaved, polyester welded into silence.
Pajamas fray at the knees, our passion filed beside bank statements, lace yellowing beneath grocery lists.
Eyes painted glossy, staring through each other’s skulls, bodies orbiting like planets without gravity.

My brother’s voice pours mildew into the receiver, a shirt left wet, stinking with fermentation.
He hands me his grief like a rag crawling with silverfish.
I gag.
I slam the drawer.
His silence scratches at the wood.
Strangers online hand me sanitized smiles I pretend to believe.

Sleep drips morphine into my skull.
The dead unzip garment bags, fasten spines into boots,
organs tucked into sleeves,
blood stitched to collars.
We walk through hospitals flooded with static.
We feast from trays sloshing morphine broth.
We laugh with mouths of broken televisions.
Sunrise shreds their costumes.
Hangers clatter bone against bone.
Every dawn another burial, another stripping, another flaying.

Combat boots twitch in the corner, leather tongues slapping tile, soles swollen with desert sand.
Trench coat fattens with smoke, wool pockets gravid with bills folded into knives.
Nightgown droops like a drowned child, cotton sagging with soup, bleach blistering the sleeves.
Each garment writhes,
sleeves dragging across the floor like tongues,
buttons spitting teeth into my palms,
shoelaces tightening around wrists.

I try to rise and collapse.
Clock-punch spine bent into submission.
Alarm screaming marrow out of bone.
Typewriters abandoned mid-sentence,
my ribs refusing to open for breath.

Heart bleeds without rhythm.
Platitudes spill from mannequin mouths:
words brittle as elastic,
letters sagging like rotten lace.
I hear my voice echo hollow through hallways.

Dog exhales warmth at my shin.
My wife’s parents rehearse joy down the hall.
My wife hums to idols dancing on glowing crosses.
I claw toward windows coated in embalming fluid.
I claw toward tomorrows already suited in black.
I claw toward coffins hammering nails inside my ribs.

The carousel vomits its grotesque litany:
Eat.
Buy.
Shit.
Donate.
Cum.
Clean.

Algorithm crowned king.
Visa bleeds debt-wine from a cracked chalice.
Packages stacked into pyramids of faith.
Devotion measured in ounces,
belief sealed in bubble wrap,
salvation postponed in transit.

Hunger saws the lining from my gut.
Wardrobe splits seams, coughing moths into the air.
Ghosts curl in plastic, unsummoned, unsent.

I confess my cowardice to the mannequins.
I confess my cruelty to the moths chewing my sleeves.
I confess my refusal to bury what has already buried me.
I confess my preference for the ghosts who return at night to unzip themselves,
over the living who demand I answer the phone.

The wardrobe is my body.
Zippers carved into ribs.
Threads dragging through muscle.
Skin stapled into seams.
Groin sanded down to plaster.
Eyes painted blue.
Mouth wired open with hanger-hooks.

The wardrobe is my coffin.
Every sleeve a relic.
Every button a wound.
Every garment a hymn.

And still I walk in it,
stitched from sorrow,
clothed in ruins,
patched with love,
stitched tight enough to survive another morning.