Doctrine

They called it
The Baltimore Catechism—
every doctrine has one,
but this book had a special creed
for teens: God, remind me
to obey and do what I am told, 
remind me in order to be loved,
that first, I must be lovable.

There was more, but those thickened
lines stuck in my throat
like betrayal, and all these years
I thought if I had just coughed them up,
I might also have remembered 
the saint who supposedly said,
it is more important to forgive 
than be forgiven, and understand than

to have been understood. But I want
you to know that those times
you reached a finger deep enough 
to make anyone else throw up,
the times you thought all those pills
might be the final answer to every problem
you failed in math class and in life,
and swallowing your own tongue
so you could pretend to speak in foreign ones—

those times were something less than holy,
and you no longer need those prayers,
at least the parts that do not belong to you, 
the parts that hung you with a fraying rope
from an ancient bag with thirty dirty coins
when the supper wasn’t ever for you.
No, you were made for lavender fields 
and migrating monarchs from the valley.
You walked away from the shadows of death,
and you are loved as is.   

Copyright February 29, 2024, Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt, all rights reserved