First, to feel it
It was in surviving that I forgot how to feel
I thought. But no
It was in these rites: Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation.
An initiation that taught me
My body was not my own, I learned
With the bishop’s every invasive and degrading word
That he, a strange man, knew more than I what was right
between my legs
The Lord be with you
And with your spirit
I don’t remember my First Communion
A membrane segregates the times
then and now
When I lift it up, my hands shake. It has become hard, Like wood
Sometimes it is a locked door
Although I’ve seen the pictures, I only remember fear
Humiliated by the dress, the priest, the watching eyes
All the Angels and Saints, and you my brothers–
I shut the door
I stopped wearing dresses
For two years I didn’t cry
I gave the bishop’s words a chance, as my mother had asked me to do
But a chance was all it took
Through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault
And even though I disobeyed decrees,
They embedded like shards in my heart
Have mercy on us, O Lord
I tell my mother that the snakes St. Pádraig drove
out of Ireland were women-worshipping pagans
She tells me the Holy Spirit is a woman
I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker
of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen
of all things visible and in-visible
The last time I asked politely if I could leave
The boy told me no
This is my body, which shall be given up to you
I told him no too, but of course, meekly
Because suffering like Jesus is holy, is sacred
He who eats me shall live because of me
The bishop knew better than I not because he was
a man of God, simply because he was a man
And now I‘ve forgotten how to do it. How to love
Sometimes I pretend I never knew
There’s the membrane, this door, an ahistorical
mess of contradictions
In truth, it was a door I built to slam shut
Perhaps my father expected to marry a free woman
But she had been through the same rites as I:
initiation into compliance, silence, the holy act of suffering
You formed man in Your own image
and entrusted the whole world to his care,
Perhaps my mother expected to marry a man
who could suffer at her side. Perhaps a Godly tyrant
so that in serving You alone, the Creator,
man might have dominion over all creatures.
I built the door because somehow I knew
these rites could break me
I knew I had to forget until I was old enough
to undo the spell they cast upon me
In this body, offered up to you, Lord and your bishops and your priests
and your sons, my brothers
who presume to know more about what is right
This is my body
not because they are men of God, they barely bother to invoke God,
This is my blood
but just because God made them men
Do this. In memory of me.
MoAde M. J. is an undergraduate student at Syracuse University studying Political Science with a minor in African American Studies. Their work has appeared in The Write Launch, Absynthe Magazine, Stellium Literary Magazine, and Mom Egg Review. They are passionate about gardening and the future of ecological design. They live with two roommates and a cat.
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