Immaculate Rejection

Before reading this piece, please know that I do not hate my mother. I love her deeply. However, the woman has wounded me deeply for so many years that we no longer speak at all.
It would be my preference to have some bit of a relationship, but she has disowned me- finding justification and comfort by wrapping herself in the cold, damp quilt that she calls religion.
I pray for her and I ask anyone who reads this to pray for each of us also.

I despised how you bathed in honesty
The dingy waters that lathered your soul
How you rinsed in the smears
Of the so-called Blemished ones

Their ancient sins and all
That should have been nothing
More than forgotten pasts

Only you could cleanse them
Only you could redeem them
How you massaged their wounds,
With your own pumiced tongue

Then you soaked in the forgiving smiles
That had never seen your own Holy water

Stagnant and clouded grey
With bi-weekly Purges
Of draining Sundays that scoured

How you continued to immerse yourself;
In all the esteem of their imbecilic
joyous expressions!
You saturated the hopes of your
once barren witness
And impregnated yourself
with divine purpose

And in exchange for my repentance
You offered to bathe your very own
Oh, how you still needed to soak!
Oh, the sub-consciously awaited abortion!

I allowed you to steep again and again
Until I ceased to believe
Thirty years later

When I had grown enough to understand
Your child-like ignorance
Complete with scripture and verse

Then simply wrapped everything in a towel
And knowingly dripped the Sinner's floor
Cold and shivering, I allowed you to slip

Into the very baptism you had warmly drawn
So selfishly for another
It is now the daughter, blessed in ritual
That annoints the porcelain mother