That Time I Called An Auntie A Bitch
- 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.
