Tomorrow the grown-ups will laugh like they didn’t just finish poisoning you the night before. You’re forever choking on poison from many nights much like this one. But you learn to swallow unpleasant things; your throat expands for it. You become unwittingly drawn to chaos as though you were born for war.
And war they shall. Who is there to make them accountable? Who is going to tell them that the children they have been given are to be protected, not to be held hostage as an unwilling audience to their madness. The children long for peace, but everywhere is war. No one is coming to save the children. These fragile, impressionable beings forced to grow resilient in a miasma of poisonous fumes. Because who cares if your sons and daughters grow up to be like cities broken into and without walls? Who cares that you’ve made them prey to the teeth of the wicked? Who cares that you’ve taught them to befriend destruction and to lay peaceably with chaos?
Bibbity bobbity boo. Perhaps this kind will come out by prayer and fasting.
Oh, how dare you?
How dare you feel this pain and discomfort. How dare you taint, question, and accuse, implying things that you don’t know or understand. How dare you kick up dust from ruins long forgotten. This edifice built is a tower of strength and sacrifices, of words spoken, monies spent, incense burned in offering and sacrifice for you. How dare you keep this poison in your belly for such a time as this; the noxious fumes of your bile demolishing bridges to your freedom. How.dare.you?
Imagine the audacity of demanding that the fruit of the tree that you corrupted produce for you sweet, delectable fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, neither can a bad tree bear good fruit. Have you forgotten? They consider their actions as victimless crimes; their words a morning mist that disperses into nothing at sunrise. But consider the hearts of your children. They are like cisterns, holding every word, every sound, every laughter, every insult, every injury; a bottomless pit of hope, of expectation…you would do well to remember that.
And you, the mighty tree. Tasked to rebuild bridges that you did not destroy, repair what you did not break, heal injuries that you did not cause. Forgive apologies that never came. You must stand strong as a pillar. If the pillar is weak, the entire house will collapse, and great will be its ruin.
So heal, so that your own children will not be lawful captives alongside you. Heal, so you too can escape the tentacles of a sordid past engorged with ignorance, with pride, with pain. Heal, and blow up the pipeline carrying the sewage of a destructive heritage. Heal, so you can sew a glorious tapestry in wisdom, in strength, in understanding, in liberty.
Tomorrow, the grown-ups will laugh like they didn’t just attempt to poison you the night before. Tomorrow, you too, will laugh, because you’ve finally learned to reject being fed unpleasant things.
