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
Posted in Katherine's Coffeehouse
