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I scrubbed the shame from under my fingernails,
as if guilt could be washed like dirt.
Cold showers never baptized the ache; 
just gave it discipline,
a neat little collar for the beast inside.

They called me godly.
I stood on pulpits of silence,
hiding my hard truths in folded hands
and stitched lips.

“Virtue,” I said once,
like it was a sword I forged from purity.
But truth?
I was celibate because I was afraid.
Afraid that my hunger would make the church tremble.
Afraid of the moan
that would betray my masculinity,
that would out the softness
under my well-pressed sermons.

You were my fifth year of Sunday bests and unwashed bedsheets,
a ghost in my room,
waiting for me to touch you
with more than doctrine.

“You’re mistaking sexual sparks for soul,”
I told you once,
coldly, like I had never burned for you.
But I had.
God knows,
I choked on the fire every night.

You slammed the door with your back turned,
spat,
“The sex only felt euphoric because I was starving everywhere else.”
Your words landed like psalms of rebellion.
And maybe you were right.

Because in my celibate kingdom,
I reigned alone.
Hard, holy, and unheld.

They told me it was wisdom.
That lust is a devil’s whisper,
not knowing it’s also a scream of aliveness.
But is virtue still virtue
if it silences the body
just to please the soul?

I have loved with my eyes shut tight,
and prayed the erection away;
but my prayers stank of fear,
not faith.

Let’s not pretend,
that choosing not to 
makes me cleaner than the one who moaned last night
with the lights on
and the shame off.

This is not
an altar call to purity culture.
This is not
a hymn of repression.

This is me,
uncloaked,
a sinner in skin,
redefining holiness in the mirror.

Touché,
you said.
And I bled truth
for the first time
without guilt.

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