I am asked to write about secrets, therefore, I shift
to the very first language I know:
To grow up between the pages of a worn out magazine. To say no to a girl I really liked because she utters a different prayer. To always comb my hair to the right because it pleases the elders. To imagine my hands like dragons, fighting. To knock on doors, and to linger on their shutting.* To sit still inside a mosquito net at night, crying. To change. To carve my heart in the shape of obedience. And to believe I am good because of it. To walk into the edge of doctrines and close my eyes in my inevitable fall.
* More than a decade later, I wrote about it in an essay. For twenty minutes, I let strangers devour my story. I was questioned by the panel: what is the urgency of this essay? The shape of truth is silence. And what is a poem but the culmination of failed silences. Why must my pain be seen apart from the world’s? According to one study, one in ten people attempted to end their lives after leaving my church. An exit is always a trickle from a faucet about to burst.