You made me cry.
You and your hundreds of brothers, sisters, cousins, grandparents, ancestors that I’ve met in the past.
Painful, piercing, burning tears that cause me such pain, I worry I’m allergic to you.
But I keep on coming back to you.
Why?
You would have thought that I’d ban onions from my house. Yell at the top of my voice. ‘Onions be gone!!!’
But I can’t. You provide such an essential element to so many dishes.
Sometimes, I think I’ve got away with it. I’ve peeled you fully. You lie there, waiting to be cut, apparently unarmed.
But then your fury is unleashed as my knife begins to slice. You weep too. Tears of malice, venom and white hot anger. Tears that say ‘You’ve hurt me and I will not let you get away with that!’
Will you tell me something onion?
I know you make me cry but out of your dozen or so relatives, is there an onion that will make me sob?
An onion, where with each layer I peel, it releases in me grief and pain and hurt that I’ve kept locked up for years, and then I’ll finally feel cleansed.
Or did God, in all his wisdom, love and kindness, not create such a beast because he knows that I wouldn’t be able to cope with that much pain?
Instead, he treats me like an onion. But oh, so, so gently does he remove my peel and layers, washing away the hurt and grime with his tears of love and tenderness.
I wrote this on a writers weekend where there was a variety of objects I could choose to write about and I chose an onion. One of the biggest onions I've ever seen. And this is what came out.
