Chapter Text
If I die before I wake,
Hers, my soul to take
And in that bleeding, crying moment
Is she ally or opponent?
Is she God, for good or ill
Or something weaker still?
*****
I had that instinct even then… I didn’t want to go closer, I didn’t want to worship her. I can’t… I can’t believe I once looked at her with love. Mother. I called her mother, but she wasn’t my mother.
I was little, and she wasn’t my mother. My real mother I called mommy, and I hugged her and she loved me. This… Lady… never even knew I existed. She died before I was born. My father knew her, but barely.
She was mother, and God. That face: a placid, peaceful smile on all her statues. I would come to know that expression for what it was: smug.
Maybe she made herself believe it was true… maybe. Or she was just a liar, and we were a bunch of fools. Except I was just a kid… I was just a kid…
Every weekend we’d gather. It was normal to me then but everything is so wrong. Why couldn’t we have any freedom? Empty promises, empty. She was dead and her council carried out her will… why, why.
We left. We couldn’t stand it and we left. But it didn’t leave me. Deep, in my core, there is only fear. Hate and fear. That was what I was taught. I didn’t learn how to love. I learned how to hate. I learned how to fear.
So I built this strong facade, and I went to school, and I was so smart… Like being smart makes me any more alive. I tried to help people… I did help people. I’m a good person. I believe in people. I help them, right?
Then why is there so much hate in my heart? So much fear? It’s like they built the core of who I am, and no matter how hard I try to move past it, to be free, I can’t. Something stops me, and I just can’t.