Baptism, In Which I Come Out Dirtier Than Before

CONTENT WARNING: Allusion that could be taken to be in relation to sexual assault, swearing.

Alexa Barstow

Scene: A bathtub. A city church street. A history.

The man with the bald head, shiny as shattered dinner plates. His grip like the serpent, the one that everybody hates, the one with the convincing rhetoric and 

the bad ideas. The one with the first girl who did something for the first time that God and all the other men hollered at, the serpent who is God in her own right and who lives in all the girls 

who like breaking men’s teeth. Yes, the man with the oath and the bloody robes and the dry hands, who touched me like all the men do, who never asks 

and only ever answers. He with the beaded bracelet, wrapped around my wrist, then sentenced to the bottom of my jewelry box because I don’t need no religion, don’t 

need no blessing. Dump the bathtub out. Send the worshippers home. I’m here to set the record straight. I’m tired of sitting in church pews and ringing church bells and watching the disregard 

of my sisters’ calluses, the disregard of the way that women are the weapons, the sacred text. Cross this out, crucify the history and try again. Get it right. It’s true that we

are the burning cathedrals. We the cursed ones. We the life givers. It seems I was the temptation all along. I am the sinful symphony, falling into place. I am the apple, 

falling from the tree. Blasphemous. Button-eyed bargainer with the bad mouth. Fuck. Filthy mouth, filthy female, they say, but please, call me what I am. Girl, woman,

conqueror. We are the ruins. We climb out of the Colosseum, again and again and again. We vandalize the pantheon, we smash the stained glass windows, we worship 

Eve and the way she goes after what she wants without asking her boyfriend first. We love. We lock boys between our hips and swallow their souls out through their 

mouths. A confessional. Pant, whisper, beg. Baby. Call me divine. Call me god. Call me nothing. Don’t you dare speak my name. Vagabond my sufferings into your scripture — is it a wonder 

I’m so vengeful? Cursed communion. I am always spitting up blood. It is sometimes/rarely/never mine. I am always hymning the hums. I am always praying the purity into pythons. I am always 

wrapping myself around greatness. No, I don’t need no blessing. I am no blushing bride, I will never be given away. I am not your daughter, I am not your virgin, I am not your anything. I eat 

Bibles for breakfast and broken bones for lunch. I burn the flames before they get the chance. Hell hath no fury like a woman. End quote. I scream from the altars and curse out the priest and

every other man who looks me in the eye, who forces wafers and words into my mouth, who touches and never asks and always answers. I bite back. 

Where is your God now? Tell me, holy man, of the religion around my wrist. I refuse the baptism, I rebuke the cleansing. Girls like me are never thirsty. Girls like me are always starved. 

I don’t believe in baptism. I’m reborn every goddamn day.