You are bad.

You are evil.

You have no right to be here.

God can not love you.

God can not see you.

God can not know you.

The incessant speeches accent a haunted hysteria. Their laughter is declamatory, regardless of accuracy, as if they are the voice of prophecy.

And they curse me while pummeling six feet of soil on my brow, making mud with my tears. My burial becomes a mud hut for the waste they say I am…

I can not speak up for myself. I yearn to demand: ”I’m real. Turn around God, look into me, I am real!”

But I open my mouth and thousands of flies surge the insides of my cheeks, and I remember the words from long ago “You can never speak of these things.” A hand covers my eyes and I fall

I fall

I

fall

I can not differentiate between my “self” and the voices who parade my shame to all the world; the embarrassment and horror overwhelm my little one, and she disappears. In her place is a siren who can prance her own humiliation – for her shame is powerful, and can make them rue their lust.  She is strong, and tells God “Fuck you.”

But she never stays long…the voices overwhelm even her, and she slithers away the moment the tobacco pipe cigar smokes and whiskey smells—they initiate her disappearance with one puff as if she never existed –and I am left in a kind of unholy terror wondering if I

Will.            Ever.

Breathe.

Again.

There are other people in there, who come to my rescue for a few moments, with great courage, but they too leave me stranded.

My little one, my little self.     ☹

It is almost impossible, maybe completely so, to uncurl from under the couch and show your face to the sun without burning holes in your eye sockets. And then it’s more impossible not to make a sound.

Where is God?

As I write that question in my adult state, sitting on my couch in the middle of the night with my dog at my feet – I am in terror. I am not five or four or six, but nearly fifty. It all comes back, the forsakenness of my tiny being – who could not fight, who could only hide or disappear into the one they wanted her to be.

And she believes everything. She believes that God can not love her, because God can not look upon evil, because she is Depravity’s sin, the spawning of God’s disgust.

I wish…I wish I could show her God’s eyes so she could discover her reflection there. But I have to say I am – even my adult self – quite unsure if she would find it there.

But Erliss, what if God is the one who doubts?

Maybe God is searching…

                                                              for God’s self

        in

                      her

         eyes.

Thank you for listening,

Much Love to each of you.

Love,

Erliss