Repentance

Tasting the flesh of your savior,

his blood thicker than the catholic’s wine,

it covers my throat and stains my

teeth with the mark of salvation.

His sacrifice makes it hard to breathe.

I choke on my sins and tears and

the prayers I’m called to send

and yet his body is supposed to save me.

Is it true your god accepts all repentance-

We’re asked to surrender our lives

to a being you say lives even after it dies,

but what if I don’t want to live an eternity

in the heaven where the old man,

muttering words of desire to be once again young and twenty

to an eleven year old,

who grazed and gripped and pushed against

not just my own concealed skin, will be?

Because he loved your god, you know.

He told me he already prayed for the father’s

and then proceeded to ask for my forgiveness. See god showed him mercy and I’m not above

the almighty, so surely my

forgiveness should commence.

It seemed his definition of forgive was

synonymous with silence.

Those words were whispered only once,

superiority disguised as an apology.

Quiet, hot breaths in my ear so his wife

who left him years ago through death

and my mother didn’t hear.

Is it true your god accepts all repentance-

I wonder if his wife smiled from heaven as

small girls were maimed.

Does your god forgive a

child’s gentle slaughter,

our very own savior’s daughter,

and did your lord welcome him to

eternal life with the arms of a

loving, all knowing, gracious father?

Is it true, god, he meant his repentance-

Forgive me for wishing all those nights

for a damning afterlife-long sentence

but more importantly, can I forgive myself

for choosing to cry when he finally

decided to die-

Is it true god accepts all-