As I kid I watched in wonder at the sight.
The shining goblet of Grape Juicy Juice,
Candles, flags, robes, and glorious gold-tipped bibles.
I loved the songs, the community, and the people.
Faces and arms raised to press up to the sky
Like they could literally feel the hand of God.
It was everything I'd been missing at home.
It was home cooked meals, smiles, and togetherness.
It was leadership, mentors, and pop rocks.
I joined AWANA at age 8.
We read the scriptures, played games, ate snacks,
And enjoyed the bath of warmth that God's love gives,
With the intensity and guilelessness that only kids can have.
There were no difficult questions and everything had an answer.
Until I got a little older.
The questions got harder and the words got harsher.
My mentor, Denise, loved me. I know she did, in her way.
But she didn't understand why my family never came with
To church or on my spiritual journey.
It was my responsibility to save their souls form eternal hellfire.
"Don't you love them? Don't you want them with you in paradise?"
Of course I did. I tried to tell them
But their expressions were condescending,
Like they knew something I didn't about the world.
But God wants to save them. God loves everyone.
Or does he?
Slowly there was less talk of love and forgiveness
More of sin, atonement, and apologies.
"You lied to your mother, Victoria?"
She rapped my hands with the bible
And looked down at me with disappointment in her eyes.
"You know God wants you to be sorry, but it's not enough."
She drilled it into me in increasingly violent ways.
The manifestations of my sins and their atonements became more.
More physical and more mental.
More and more rules piled up.
More and more sins piled up.
More and more lessons and meetings occur between us.
I read the entire bible. I memorized verse after verse.
I became passionate about helping others,
But instead of soup kitchens and fundraisers
We spent more time outlining everyone who would burn.
Gays, feminists, other religions, different denominations, Me.
"You don't deserve God's love and yet he gives it to you. Are you grateful?"
"You can't preach or teach, you will find a man one day who will help you."
"Hold out your arms."
Until one day found me sitting on the edge of my roof.
Wondering what it would be like if I was in hell.
Wondering if I was gone would anything be different.
Wondering how I could prove myself.
I climbed back in through the window and picked up a hammer.
The one my dad used, but never to fix things, before he left.
I laid down on my bed and slammed it into my ribs
Once. Twice. Three times.
Tears ran down my cheek
while I gasp quietly.
*Is it enough yet?

Baby Teeth

I pulled the prayers from my raw gums like baby teeth. With the
          blood spat into my palm, there lay the tools with which I
          chewed up everything I ever put into my mouth. And yet even
          then I had felt the hands working my jaw for me.

Every day I tongue the empty space before meals and again at
          bedtime. There’s this moment when I feel like I should be
          saying something, but the void leaves my tongue aimless in the
          newfound space. I’ve grown accustomed to it.

I wasn’t so fond of it when they wiggled in my mouth when I talked
          or ate, acting like a broken saloon door for my roving tongue. I
          didn’t like to brag about it with my friends. It didn’t quite feel
          like a rite of passage as it did a loose Band-Aid.

They dangled on those last few roots that desperately clung on to that
          childlike innocence, which looked like Awana badges, Sunday
          school, father reading to me bedtime stories of David, the
          girlfriends in church that were always repentant after we
          touched;

I began to believe I could sew it back in if I only believed hard
          enough. It was in those last few efforts that I was at my lowest,
          when my gums started to become infected as bacteria got
          beneath the bone and festered in the flesh. I grew sorer and
          sorer.

At some point I ripped every last one of them out. The therapist had
          cancelled my last three appointments. The bible study couldn’t
          progress since it refused to answer my first three questions. I
          stopped believing an artist had to first and foremost be
          miserable.

I still keep them in a little plastic treasure chest in a cardboard box in
          the garage, along with my plastic baseball trophies and other
          sentiments unworthy of the bedroom shelves. I recycled all the
          extra bibles I previously felt guilty enough to never say no to.

Sometimes a meal looks so good I feel the need to thank someone for
          it. Sometimes I wake up so happy I need to give someone credit.
          Sometimes that’s not the case. I’m happy I don’t have the voices
          telling me through my own teeth how sinful I am.

I’m also happy they’re not telling you how sinful you are.

I tongue the space before meals and before I drift to sleep. I feel
          something growing there. My parents are looking into an
          operation that will put the teeth back in. I still fear one day I’ll
          be the one to grab the sewing kit.

I don’t fear cavities anymore. I think they took them all with them. I
          brush my teeth now and believe in modern medicine, and
          climate change. Needless to say, I didn’t put them under my
          pillow that night.