Mamma, I do not want to hurt you. You’ve taught me that patience is a virtue and I know it is not apparent as of late, but I would gladly sit and debate the validity of my existence and I would bite my tongue with persistence, if it means that you would accept me and let me love who ever loves me. Mamma, can you say it’s a choice when all I do is lower my voice and let your words, laced with bitterness, roll from my back into the abyss, where you believe my soul is going? Not that you say it, but I can’t help but knowing the worry behind your tongue. Mamma, would you rather perceive me the way that men have written me out to be two thousand years ago? How could they know the softness of her kiss? How could they disregard something as tender as this? The way she breathes power into my vulnerability. The relentlessness of my insatiability at the welcome of her smile. The desire to drive for miles and miles With only the horizon the destination in mind and only her hands linked perfectly to mine. How is that wrong? How is it a sin to have such a place to belong? How can you wish happiness for me when the happiness I have is unsatisfactory To you. Is that not enough? Mamma, am I not enough? You can kiss my pleading eyes. You can hold me while I cry. You can tell that I’m alive. Yet, you meet me with resistance and you perpetuate the existence of the girl you thought I was. The girl you wish I was. Mamma, I do not want to hurt you, but you’ve taught me that patience is a virtue. So, am I not owed as much? What of the hurt you inflict on me when you say that my will is free and I am choosing to go against you and the god that refuses to stay true to his own word? Not to say that it’s absurd to believe something written two thousand years ago. Mamma, just so you know I am more than words on paper, reworded a thousand times Wherein the meaning of love has been lost in translation. But I can tell you, without confusion, that the love I feel is no intrusion of your beliefs and morals. After all, how could love be immoral? If that is the all-encompassing message of a book that has wrought so much wreckage, then the devil loves the sinners more than you hate our sin. Mamma, I know that I’ve hurt you. Your eyes are more true to your heart than your words are. I know you love me. I love you more than I can love. You have given me that capacity above All the other things you have taught me. Love is patient. Thus, my love has virtue. Love is kind. Thus, how could mine harm you? Mamma, please do not hurt me. Please do not look away from me. Please do not perceive me through what you are told by a book that is too old to understand our modern world. I am still your daughter, still the girl you want me to be. I am happy and I am free. I am respectful and not resentful. I am kind and unintentional. Mamma, you can hold me. Please hold me. Do not let the cold consume me. Do not let the world make me feel like I have nowhere else to go. -Carina Wessels