Saying I Love You In Tempered Religions

Before I said it to you I said it to them, one by one, in the ways that mattered to them. I told her to eat well and I told her to dance, sing, scribble to her delight. I told them to be themselves and be beautiful; methodically the flowers bloom where they are planted, where they are watered, where they are loved. I pulled on my strings, I conducted my orchestra, I dined in my silken spider web - I sounded sugar sweet sickle alarms and presented a lamb for slaughter.

The teenage girl is a tempered religion. There is no ache like this one, there is no laughter like this. This, the worship of magazine queens and sacrifice to lip gloss gods. This, the brushed braids and blushed cheeks - girlhood on the bathroom floor.

Before I said it to you I felt it for her, bit by bit, in the ways that mattered to me. I have fed her good food and I have watched her sing her heart out, silver platter, skewers and all. I showed her life by the sea, warmth, hands and eyes that know her. My words and my promises come in a vessel two fold, one sealed with dedication and one who it hasn't seen. To keep one and break the other, golden china spilling down antique store shelves, to write one thing and to say the other beautifully. But now, I said I would, and so I am. I am lifting my own moon and raising my own tides, shaping this beach of beauty once again in my wanes and waxes.

I have decided, my love, to become again. Crushed bones or milk teeth, pink to purple to bruise; I have decided to inherit the cycle of folklore and set it in stone.

I can do what they can't, I can forge bone from shreds the way leaves can litter trees, I will do to myself what spring does to the open fields. And I will tell them, pronouncing each heavy syllable with the weight and fragrance it deserves, that I did it on my own with love that was taught to me in flashes and whispers, solid smoke in real mirrors with no illusion that was meant to be there. I will do it all and I will do it right. And then maybe there can be change. Prophesied or dreamt, maybe there can be change.

You see, before I said it to you I felt it right through me. Soaked, sorrowed, sacrilegious, soft, sweet, serene - and it smelt just like fresh rose. The teenage girl is a tempered religion, yes, as confirmed by scripture; but what is more divine than this? What is more divine than that?