seams and stitching ♡ published

OPEN LETTER TO RELIGION

When I was a young girl, my family found refuge in you. My mother took shelter in your churches, reformed her mouth so every time she spoke her lips would look like a prayer, welded her hands together in everlasting praise, shattered her knee-caps to make it easier to surrender to a being she was not sure existed. My mother was a woman who only wore skirts and cloth of a single, unmixed fabric, knew every commandment by heart and taught me to know Our Father like the back of my hand. You were the border we desperately chased after, the shore we swam through oceans for, you were an untouchable idea we could not wrap our heads around. You were beautiful, you were, and you tasted you like sugared honey on our tongues because we were ignorant believers with brainwashed minds and broken wills. I still have my church clothes, I still have my rosary, and it is your fault that I am wandering in a haze of disbelief because I am still fighting off guilt every time I make a mistake. I am not perfect, I am a SINNER, I was born with the original sin and I am sorry if God no longer loves me but this Earth is a beautiful place that I would not mind to remain on. He can take back all his angels, he can take back all his prayers, give my mother her backbone back, give my mother new knee-caps, give me a new tongue, teach me a new language in which I can find Something else to praise. You're the thick black line slicing through society that I have to accept I cannot blur. I'm searching for an escape from you, but I was born in your mouth, every atheist I'll kiss will taste your corruption on my breath and I will have to apologize for the sour taste I leave on their lips. You've tarnished me, you have, and I still chase after you because you were the first thing I ever knew. I still wear your shackles, I still wear your rust, I still feel like I am wearing a sinner's skin when my shirt is a polyester-and-cotton-blend and I cannot believe we still follow rules written in a book, thousands of years ago, by people who had never had a meal with God over a table of virtuous fruit and righteous meat. I am sorry I feel guilty for eating meat, I am sorry I cannot find it in myself to hate same love, I am sorry I've disappointed you by questioning you in more languages than one but actually, I'm not. You've broken down my speech pattern into nothing more than self-righteous preaching and apologizing. I want to see you get down on your righteous knees and apologize. I'm still finding what I believe in, I'm still trying on new skins like a traitor to my own origins but I did not swim through a sea of persecution and oppression for more of it on the shore. I came for forgiveness, I came for acceptance, I came for angels singing and golden streets and pearl roads and a heaven filled with animals. I am sorry I refuse to go to circuses, zoos, or aquariums, I am sorry I refuse to swat at flies or mosquitos, I am sorry my heart swells with joy when two people of the same gender kiss at the altar, but I was taught that you were good. You were kind. You were here to make us better, you weren't hear to make us worse, and I'm still here asking for you to untangle this rosary from my windpipes, I want my voice back, damnit, I want more heroes who don't thank God but thank the Earth they stand on. I want all my apologies back in my mouth. I want all my opinions torn from my tongue. You were supposed to heal me, but here I am wrapping my mother's knees in gauze, here I am fighting off the word faggot, here I am arguing with myself every time someone says "God is good," and I think of the concentration camp where Anne Frank died and the God that watched her life slip from her grasp, the God that watches Asian female fetuses get aborted by the hundreds daily, the God that knew Malala and Michael Brown and my mother and father, grandmother and grandfather, every single soul on this Earth that ever felt pain or injustice. And this Earth, that we return our bodies to, this Earth is good, this Earth where we are recycled, and you don't get it, you don't, you're not helping anyone. The boy that claims your language in his mouth every afternoon, he sings about sex and drugs and suicide in the dialect of righteous-sin, and he comes right back to you everyday. Here is your tabernacle. Here is your synagogue. Here is your Nirvana and your Savior and your Bible and your everything. Keep it locked in your dungeon filled with angels. I am keeping my good Earth in my hands, I am keeping my questions, I am keeping my gauze and my forgiveness and my acceptance and my unapologetic voice box. Last night, you see, I had a dream that Buddha handed me Pandora's box and said, "Here, Mary: Lucifer sent this for you." My hands removed the cover and the history of human desire flew out. I don't remember what was left, but I am nearly positive it had something to do with you, and you still don't get it, do you? Here is the sky. And here is the ocean, and the slabs of land floating on the surface, and here are the soulless animals crying in the depths of hell, and here is the core of the Earth where you are rumored to live, and here is my copy of the New Testament gathering dust on my nightstand. Here is the pure cotton skirt, and here is the tombstone of an innocent girl who died by your God's hand, and here is the repeated image of a vegetable man who attempted to save a woman's life, and here is your hatred. Stitch it all together, the way you do with your beautiful lies, and nail it on your cross. Don't deny it--the resemblance is uncanny.