i am jotting down my sins on pink paper cranes.
i write them in pen. shameful things: i loved a man
once. my mother says, there is something wrong
with a boy who won't finish his dinner before his dessert.
i always give into temptation: the chocolate in the pantry,
this poem, me. i am alive or i am dead depending on my closeness
to the sun: too close & i bubble up; my skin bursting at the nerve-seams.
& it is here that i see the meaning of salvation: millions of us walking
in the desert, cranes cupped in our hands. then at once, we open them.
in the sky: something pink & orange & paper.
