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That Time I Called An Auntie A Bitch

By Grace Lau

  • Technically I muttered it 
  • silently under my breath— 
  • even at seven (or was it nine?) 
  • I knew I was guilty 
  • just as Cain surely did. 
  • But Auntie was skilled 
  • at lip-reading 
  • though she could never divine my mind 
  • whenever she cornered me at church 
  • to ask 
  • yet again 
  • why don’t you come to church with your parents more 
  • why don’t you try to make more church friends 
  • why don’t you come to this and that event 
  • Sometimes she would get 
  • too close 
  • and I would come away, blessed 
  • with a light, heavenly 
  • drizzle on my cheek.

 

  • A very unkind thing, the idea of killing 
  • with kindness, to crush someone 
  • with wheezings of God’s love, bury them alive 
  • in the sweaty bosom 
  • of benevolence. 
  • I might have been eleven. 

 

  • Auntie told my mother after 
  • and I was very 
  • very sorry 
  • that I had embarrassed 
  • Mama. I’d stolen 
  • her joy, proved my very existence 
  • was sin 
  • yet again. 

 

  • I wondered if Auntie marvelled 
  • at my foolishness 
  • when my tongue betrayed me, 
  • not knowing my queerness 
  • had already unmade me, 
  • not knowing her spittle could never 
  • save me, 
  • not knowing her teenage golden boy 
  • had been swaggering 
  • through our hallowed halls 
  • gleefully scrawling the Good Word 
  • of Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady”— 
  • all over 
  • the church basement’s whiteboards. 

 

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash.

Read more

  • Grace Lau
  • Issue 161
  • Poetry

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