By Shannon Waite
I’d been born on a wide, unzipped night, to a married mother, might as well have been a single mother, because her husband Joe wasn’t even my dad, and she may not have known it to start but she birthed me to be the best one, the only one, the savior, and I would be idolized – what I'm saying is: worship me, because I’ve learned that if you hear it enough, it’s how you’ll come to know me ––– this all started in Orlando, maybe Atlanta, might have been Dallas, because Joe stayed even after she got pregnant by someone who wasn’t him, he stayed until he moved us, and not much is known after that so I’ll tell you about it; Joe abuses and moves, abuses and moves, a lot, and I wasn’t enough, and sometimes I’d escape before Joe is never heard from again, and so what, my mother may have thought me insane, one day she claims I am beside myself, says I have a demon and I am mad, why listen to him, and so what, kids ignore me, the growing bruises on my forearms, claim I’m strange, wild, the only one, but this is how I will come to be known and kept front and center in people’s minds, because I declare myself to be God and how else do I become God but by letting you hang me, nails through my wrists, and I start asking myself whose fault is this, and it’s theirs, yours, I know it to be true; after I was born, my mother put a sign above my bed, “This child is destined to be the cause of the falling and the rising of many”, and it’s your fault I am this way, the rise and fall is what I’ll do because I know it’s my destiny; somewhere in another time, I was enraged, jealous, and cruel, some might call it stern, but when I came to you all I showed mercy and that’s because I know how it’s done – reinventing my public image – I planned, planned, made myself into who they want me to be, their savior, because people will follow you if you tell them what they want to hear, tell them they are saved, worthy, and all the damn mistakes they made are forgiven, I forgive them, now they follow me even though I know nothing – it helps if you act like you do (the kingdom of god is within you and it's me who can help you discover it – where true life, eternal life is found) but the place I claim to save them from, the Hell we live in, will be made by me, let me tell you how Hell didn’t exist before I came – because I am one of you, one of us, not an outsider; maybe Jesus was a suicide – he did it to himself – yes, I get it, because I don’t care if I live or die, but who's to know, to say, that I need saving - after all, suffering is what transforms us and now I will save you I think while looking at the gun, glossy and firm, warm in my palm, and while I do not wish to kill you, I wish to destroy your body, make you lose it, I think while looking at the front doors, I have fostered a death cult, I know, about the people in hall passing right now, I hear the bell ring, and maybe I’m better than Jesus, my ministry is now, and I’m younger, earlier, I’m known, recognizable, better than all competitors and, after all this, I think, What Would Jesus Do?
Shannon Waite has taught English and Creative Writing in Detroit; her fiction has been published in PANK, Hobart, and elsewhere.
Photo by Shannon Waite.
