The Root

“How long have you battled with your
mental health?”
I had to laugh at first.
Battle with it?
I really just surrendered.
But I thought.
My brother died.
After that.
My grandfather died.
After that.
My mother died.
After that.

I remembered.

I first went crazy when a group of Christians
brought me and another teacher
into a room at a church
to listen to complaints
about the books we had their children read.

“Wicked,” “Perverse”
“Corrupt children”
They tied us to our chairs with their accusations.
The words,when sprayed on us by a pastor,
were acidic, eating through the paper of our diplomas.
But we sat still in the undercurrent.
Words were kidnapped
from pages
and raped before our faces.
I could see tears puddle in my colleague’s eyes.
But we had been told not to defend ourselves.
To stay quiet.
If we just stayed quiet, it would go away.

We sat silent.
And something in me was murdered that day.

“Am I this evil?”
I couldn’t help but ask myself.
I loved them.
I just wanted them to learn.

I have sinned.
Oh, I have sinned,
but that sin is not my sin.

"They eat each other here,"
I heard the whisper bouncing off sterile walls,
the sacred walls of orthodoxy and contempt,
and I thought they meant something like the Lord's Supper
or the Eucharist, but that wouldn't be right--not eat each other, that would be eat Him--
but I distinctly heard "each other," and I'm not even sure who whispered it;
it just came in my head.

Cannibalism from Spanish Canibalis,
name (as recorded by Christopher Columbus)
of the allegedly cannibalistic Caribs of Cuba and Haiti.
Oral Sadism
Vultures feed on the dead,but God's children feed on the living.

This is the answer,
the secret I hide inside me.
This is why I sometimes break down in tears for no reason.
Why I sometimes fly apart.
Why I wake up sweating in panic at 3 a.m.
Why I run from conflict whenever I can.
Why I desperately want to be loved.
Why I trust few persons
but God.