She came to my bed last night,
and told me to pray.

"Pray for God to help with your stress in school," she said.
"Oh, but I'm not stressed"
"So pray thanks to God for that."
"Okay..."
She doesn't leave.
"Am I praying to you or to Him?"
She sighs and sits next to me.

"Repeat after me..."
Padre nuestro que estás en el cielo,
santificado sea tu Nombre;
venga a nosotros tu Reino;
hágase tu voluntad
en la tierra como en el cielo.
Danos hoy
nuestro pan de cada día;
perdona nuestras ofensas,
como también nosotros perdonamos
a los que nos ofenden;
no nos dejes caer en la tentación,
y líbranos del mal. Amén.

I do as she says. She gives me a kiss and smiles.
"I love you. You'll always be my girl."
I smile back.
"Good night."

Once she leaves, I turn in my bed to face the wall
and I cry.
I cry, "She'll never love me."
I cry, "She'll never accept me."
I cry, "She'll only ever love her."
I cry, "What is wrong with me?"

The waves of pain crash into me
It starts in my chest,
And rolls all the way to my finger tips
And out through my eyes.
It hurts so much.

I look up, and I pray,
"Why, God, have you made me like this?
Why have you made me into something that is so wrong in your eyes, in her eyes?
All I wanted was to be loved and happy.
God, please,
Why am I like this?
Why do I have to live like this?
Why have you given me a choice between two sins:
Either live as myself, my gender diverse self, my oh so sinful self
Or **** myself because I can't bear to live any other way.
Why, God?
Why won't you just let me die?"

I sob into my pillow, quietly enough so that they won't hear me from their bedroom on the opposite side of the hall.
But God hears everything, doesn't He?
Why doesn't He hear me?

LORD GOD i know it's been a
while since my knock
knees bruised the floor
sweating hands prostrate
still trembling. starving, LORD.
sated, LORD.  please, thine
cut-and-dry intimations intimidated
by each opaque insinuation;
JESUS CHRIST Gag Me.
i am tangled razor wire
twisted desire LORD GOD i
know it's been a while.

up until you are four feet tall
you think you're gonna be the next ****** mary;

every day you comb your hair with soap-dry fingers
and dress up like the sky.
you practice raising your hand and using it
to press the cumulonimbus waiting between your lips
gently down your throat;
you practice being clear;
you practice cursive till it's circuitry

at lunch, you fold airplanes with precision,
cover them in crayon script and
throw them toward the floaters
in your vision, past birches
and the pale afternoon moon.
your worst will dive to a floor stained with pizza grease;
your best will only sit indefinitely
on the reachless windowsill
of the school cafeteria

you and your best friend
practice getting married at recess,
gathering dandelions and buttercups into sloppy bouquets
till she gets stung by a bee
and is led inside through gray hallways.
you play statue on the grass in a dark green jumper
and look for white clovers while you wait for the bell

your third grade teacher has you
dressing 'venial sin' and 'mortal sin'
in lemon-scented ink that burns your lips
but not the page;
it makes you taste petrichor
writhing in your teeth, hear downpours
against the wild soil of your esophagus and cheeks,
and in a few years you'll try to bury your guilt
with acorns deep in that sandy ground

you're used to laying upside-down on your bed
wondering if jesus ever lied to mary and joseph
about climbing trees under bethlehem's star,
if he let their branches color
his books green, his hands purple.
you wonder if it's sinful
to scar notebooks how you do, how he did:
quiet, inhaling--

--

at five and a half feet tall, you still feel
like how jesus' notebooks probably weren't:

you allow the dots on your i's to dangle too far to the left,
your clothes and hair and sky to be scorched
by prism fragments and setting suns

and, sometimes, you let the clouds between your lips talk for you,
and, sometimes, every syllable is a promise from god after the flood

but sometimes you kneel in back pews
and recite a tenth hail mary
and think about whether she ever held a hand
that was stained yellow from the petals of palm-warmed flowers:

and sometimes you're blank again

I didn't see it coming;
I expected nothing else.
Thirteen years old, hiding behind the rules
so I didn’t have to face
that shortcoming, that missing piece.

Once I had accepted limitation as
the sublime:
something that would come in time.
The constraints, then, gave it meaning,
deciding who says what.
Syntax is rules, and rules are limitations.
Without them, we are-- what?

But in time I came to want it,
that freedom to--
I traded "pressure to not" for "pressure to do".
Peering through the rhetoric,
I ventured into the upper reaches, and
I came apart.
There was nothing to hold me together
in this elevator, its yellowed walls crumbling away.

“Not all freedom is good. You can have terrible freedom.”
Was it the mother or the Aunt that said this?
Or Friedrich “entsetzliche Freiheit”--

Ah, Schiller.
What of the Mrs? Did she have freedom
in her husband, in Richard F.?
More freedom in the
(****-and-) (ball-and-) chains
than in the haze of youth?
The most, then, (it can be presumed)
from her departures: first to Alaska,
then even farther north, from where none return.

As freedom dissolved into expectation,
itself now another limitation, I wondered.
Which had it worse:
the woman (machine) outside the yellowing elevator walls,
or the girl (ghost) pacing within?

and under the eyes of god he takes me
he kisses the skin crafted by angels
tainted by men
and tastes the sweet suckle honey
from between my hips
all of which makes me holy
he traces and kisses with a sharp tongue
and licks up red wine spilt fresh on my satin sheets
he wipes my tears with razor blades
in hope to see something virtuous

my sins rot my innocent flesh
even god can’t save me now
i pray and pray and pray and pray
my knees raw from the bloodied cobblestone tiles
my tears are no longer righteous
my mother told me
when god doesn’t answer, be one
but how can i be a god
when behind my eyes all i see is darkness
though red wine spills out my mouth and veins
and men take their portions of my body
the hole of which my soul once stored faith
shelters the cold empty remains of
what once was

in the name
of god
i was
demonized.

i bled tears
from lashes
of the
outrage of
my mother
who recited
verses
when i was
buttered.

my cries
echoed
in the
hollow walls
of my
father's
beating heart
as he
uttered
blasphemous
monologue.

it was not
sin
i was
absolved of,
but rather
of love
that i
desperately
needed.

I never felt loved. I remind myself it’s not because I wasn’t lovable, but because I was made to hate everyone who loved me and loathe everything I’ve ever loved. You had to purge me of love to assure you were its only source.

I looked for love in a golden page— learned quickly what it was to feel imprisoned by flesh-– learned quickly I’m meant to feel so tightly wound it’s as if  barbed wire snakes  my skin. I’ve yet to come undone. The serpent is starved for its prey and I let it swallow me whole.
I know I was born to listen— born to obey. The word “yes” was burned on my tongue from the moment I could speak it, recited like a scripture, scorched into my subconscious by a “saint’s” shallow sermon.

Love was never patient, nor was she kind. Love struck without warning. She consumed me whole as the serpent does and spit me out when she was full. To this day, I starve.

Love was pompous. I was nothing but she was the world. No pride of God could measure to that of the saint who loved me.

Love dishonored me with every slice from her tongue. Love was selfish. Love was rageful. She shattered with the lightest touch. She was wicked— a liar. She claimed to keep me safe but my fear of hell was nothing compared to my fear of her. I was the only thing love hated more than herself.

Love recited my wrongs more than my name.

Love says I’m a liar. She says I am cursed like her. Deep down, I think it’s true. Love was fruit grown from a poison vine. Deep down I know there’s cancer at my roots. Deep down I know I rot.

Love only wants me when I’m small. When I’m afraid. When I’m alone. When I’m malleable. Love loves me when she is the only thing I have to love.

The love I know is violent. She is brutal and unforgiving. Love killed me with her first touch.

Purify through fire and fury
Scourge away imperfections
But in doing so, sear away the layers of myself
That I never knew I would miss
Until now, with raw baby flesh left
Pink, bubbling burns.

Sit down, little fool;
These words are not meant for you
Your little ears are too soft and sensitive
For such a scalding reality.