Once upon a time I asked, for the seventh time, When will you forgive me?
Alas, Not yet, you said again, a sword through my heart.
I wondered when you would be ready. Forgiveness is not a concept in our culture, the counselor you approved explained to me. Forgive means “for God,” she sermonized. I had seen angels and demons in the ink blots. No one has been so fantastical, she professed, in all my years of practice. I feel sorry for you Americans, brought up with religion, she confessed. To us, it’s child abuse. This is why half of your marriages end in divorce, she preached. We believe in familial love, not these romantic, Disney lies. It’s time to grow up, she admonished. In a final call to the altar: it’s time to kill the fairytale.
But in my heart I held on even tighter. I don’t want it every day, but sometimes, I proclaimed, Jesus as my Savior, I want to dance in the clouds. I knew then that it was over. Hot is hot and cold is cold and I knew I would spue thee out of my mouth. For I had repented of things I hadn’t done to you, my husband, the only father of my children, and you left me like a beggar you did not clothe. Truly I tell you, you did not do for me as I would do unto you. What your religion preached was a heresy: for to forgive is not for God, it was for you and me, for all that is holy, to float in the sky, holding hands as one family, happily ever after, the end.
