Stalwart and obedient

A model child

I did what my mother told me

Never asked questions

Or showed obstinance

Raised to fear God

And fear it was

As damnation loomed constantly

In my fragile heart

They sent me away at sixteen

To a convent

Where women dressed identically

A black-and-white silent film

Devoid of substance

I didn’t object

It was not in my nature

If this was God’s plan for me

So be it

I became a clone of all the others

Whatever I used to be

Faded into the empty halls

And repeated prayers

Eating the same meals every day

The color drained from life

All to give way

For a focus on Christ

And I wanted to, truly

Dutiful as I was

But I could not find Him

In this our daily bread

Nor in the cobblestones

I’d counted again and again

And even the crucifix on the wall

Seemed to tell me

It didn’t quite know what it represented

I watched the other Sisters

Emulating the way they sang

‘Glory be to God in the highest’

Trying to discover the meaning

They derived from the reiterating

Like cogs in a well-oiled machine

They lived each day clockwise

The same way each time

Never shifting

Or asking why

I wrote to my mother

Crying alone on my mattress

To see if she would explain

What any of this meant

Why I was here

And if it was my destiny to wander

These monochromatic halls

Until my eyes can no longer make out

The portrait of Christ

In the chapel

In a letter weeks later

She said not to write her anymore

The letters stopped coming

No longer the perfect

Obedient child

I had opened a sinkhole

By asking a question

By daring to wonder

I was swallowed up

By my own inquiry

If that was the world

One where questions were sinful

Where answers were secrets

I couldn’t stay

In this Abbey of riddles

If I was to know anything at all

I had to leave

To run

To be free

All that I had was but little

That fit in one bag

I did not tell the Abbess

When I fled in the night

Finally breaking the habit

No longer so acquiescent

But ready to finally ask

And to finally know