the law of force of line upon line
The neighbor who molested me when I was a kid is no longer living at the house at the bottom of the hill. He's in a nursing home, has had his leg amputated, and his kids all hate him. He's an old man. He's an old man and going to die.
He's going to die and I'm honestly sorry I never got to carve him up. I say this as a pacifist, as a mother, as someone who is capable of love with all her heart; I would like to chop that motherfucker into tiny pieces.
He's the quickest path to my unspoken rage. It's deep but just under the surface, a black vein I can feel pulsing through me all the time if I stop and close my eyes.
When I was younger, I visualized sin as a liquid thing. It had no defined shape. It flowed. And after the abuse, after the denial by my mother, after it went on and went further, I visualized it inside me, flowing and filling me.
And later, when I injected into a vein, I imagined I was fighting it, like the drug would dilute my sin somehow. The needle was a sword, my only defense or attack. I never felt as ashamed of my addiction as I felt about the abuse.
That house is where I questioned God for the first time. I looked at the framed picture of The Pope on his bedside table and wondered why nothing happened to stop his hands and lies. I went to church full of guilt, certain the priest could see it in me, certain he knew I was wicked.
The house has been sold to someone else, so it's lost some of its power, but it's still the house where it happened, and parts of the little girl me are still trapped there, full of shame.
I dreamed it was razed and amidst the settling dust in the rubble I found the photo in its cheap plastic frame: John Paul II and his knowing smile.
He's going to die and I'm honestly sorry I never got to carve him up. I say this as a pacifist, as a mother, as someone who is capable of love with all her heart; I would like to chop that motherfucker into tiny pieces.
He's the quickest path to my unspoken rage. It's deep but just under the surface, a black vein I can feel pulsing through me all the time if I stop and close my eyes.
When I was younger, I visualized sin as a liquid thing. It had no defined shape. It flowed. And after the abuse, after the denial by my mother, after it went on and went further, I visualized it inside me, flowing and filling me.
And later, when I injected into a vein, I imagined I was fighting it, like the drug would dilute my sin somehow. The needle was a sword, my only defense or attack. I never felt as ashamed of my addiction as I felt about the abuse.
That house is where I questioned God for the first time. I looked at the framed picture of The Pope on his bedside table and wondered why nothing happened to stop his hands and lies. I went to church full of guilt, certain the priest could see it in me, certain he knew I was wicked.
The house has been sold to someone else, so it's lost some of its power, but it's still the house where it happened, and parts of the little girl me are still trapped there, full of shame.
I dreamed it was razed and amidst the settling dust in the rubble I found the photo in its cheap plastic frame: John Paul II and his knowing smile.