Why I Was Never Baptized

When I was small
I didn’t believe in Santa Claus
but I did believe in a bearded man,
who wasn’t a man, and less so a woman,
who was really three people,
and one was a spirit
and one was a son of the other.
I didn’t know if he was very nice,
or how big he was,
but he felt like a box
and I was in the box,
and everyone said he loved me.

I learned to let words roll off my tongue
which had no meaning to me,
writ in an old, tired English
translated and re-translated so people like me
could form them,
and I was told to keep them in my box
because they were the only truth,
and not to question them.

To this day, I don’t know a place
where truth exists before questions, but

as I grew bigger the box grew smaller.

I was never baptized.
Some people are surprised to know,
and every time I have to explain
how I was taught that it was a choice;
a conscious declaration of devotion to the
truth-without-questions,
the man-with-three-faces,
one that would last the rest of my days,
and I always have to explain that
it wasn’t really a choice
but I took it anyway.

I took it when the box turned into
a gag over my thoughts
that darkened corners of my own mind,
and put up signs forbidding access.
I took it when the box turned into
my mother’s anger when I laughed.

I took it when I saw people in boxes all around,
walking about as though nothing held them.
Never right where they stood
and always gazing forward,
they were unable to grasp eternal but
willing to make the best of it,
even if it meant watching everyone else writhe
and gnash their teeth.

A life without end is a curse in any circumstance,
and I don’t know how I opened the box.
I don’t know how no one has put me back inside
when I see people spend their entire lives hunched over,
hugging their knees, and yet I can stand.
I have opened the drapes in my mind,
and watched the dust disappear into sunshine –
into the love I have found in her painted eyes,
into the truths found in questions sung out and echoed back
over the years that our world has brightened the universe.
I don’t know how I turned my box into a door and walked out.

I was never baptized.

As for the thousand voices crying “hellfire”, know this:
I will burn before I drown.