“Sometimes when you’re going through something, you don’t want to think about it, you just don’t want to deal with it.” –Tomer Peretz

“Burgeoning”

Fiction. Based on a True Conversation with Mom.

By Nikki Wicz

This journal entry is inspired by true events. Some of the characters, names, businesses, incidents, and certain locations and events have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional

Love Rejoices with the truth, and so
should you have, when I opened up to
you. Taking a brick out of the wall I
had spent so much time building. But
instead you told me of sin.

Love is patient, as I hoped you would have
been, instead you implore me to tell you
more. To answer your questions, to explain
myself, because you could not understand me.
But I’ve never heard you tell me you loved
me more than now, now that you have a reason
not to.

Love is kind, but you have condemned me
for judging you, like you would never do me.
You just didn’t agree with me. But how can I
make you conceive the idea that you–
who has sold your ears to angels– cannot
disagree with my love.

Love keeps no record of wrongs, but you
list mine to me now, because I have
stereotyped christians. I have lumped you
in with evil bigots who protest funerals, who
hate people for their disparate gods, who curse
women for their autonomy. But I’ve seen
that hatred in your eyes, and I’ve felt it
in the way you lecture. It feels like
your love is shepherded by a bible verse, and not
because I am lovable in your eyes.

Love is not proud, but you say you won’t change,
that you don’t understand the way I am quiet, stoic,
the way I am like my father, but what I heard was
that you were not willing to think. That I
was not worth your comprehension, and how
do I tell you that you are neotenous, that you
can’t think outside of the book: written by men,
translated by men, changed by men
claiming to hear the Word
of god?

Love does not boast, but you can’t help
but blame yourself for my mental illness,
you should have considered the
consequences of creating life before
you did it. I did not ask to be born, I
did not ask to be raised by ignorance
and fear, and it took me too long to learn
that life was not just a snake and
an apple.

Love is not rude, but I still feel guilty
when I love someone, and I still feel guilty
when I am passionate, and I still feel guilty.

Love always protects, but I have been
endangered by your thinking, like a hunted
pig running from the bullet of steadfast,
stunted beliefs. I don’t need an omnipotent spirit
to tell me what is right because my god is my mind,
and the bible never changes, but good does.

Love always trusts, but I don’t know how to put these ideas
in your head, because I know you won’t listen
when I tell you; you have to think it up on your own,
but for as long as I’ve known you, an original
thought, has never seemed to cross your mind.