【by Grace Fangmann】
LITANY FROM A DAUGHTER
Our Lady, Most Holy, most Righteous, most Pure, keep me in your heart, I pray. Bless me with your courage and your serenity in my times of need.
Mother Mary, pray for us.
Our Lady, Star of the Sea, Mystical Rose, Gate of the Dawn, give me your beauty and your grace. Strike awe into the fibers of my heart, grant me the divinity that courses through the fabric of the cosmos. You are everything I am not, infused with the saccharine placidity of BEING; you are, and I am not, or at least, I will only be for a little while. My light twinkles lackluster against the sun.
Mother Mary, pray for us.
Our Lady of Solitude, give me courage. Lend me insight. Let me speak it, let me shout it; let me think it and not be afraid of it. Let me share it and let me scream it, let me find a way to release it from this cage of my mind.
Mother Mary, pray for us.
Our Lady of Ransom, our security and our help, we rely upon you not to take but give instead, we rely on you for unfailing providence – the blood of your womb which was shed for our sins, does it seem worth it, now? – does it seem garish, splashed against this hill? – does it seem a dying stream, trickled up, evaporating in the sunshine? Forgotten and trodden underfoot until it homogenizes itself with the soil and earth. The scarlet no longer shines so. If they pick up their feet, they’ll find a slime of mud and blood beneath them, but they won’t know the truth – they took so much from you, and yet lack so much still – the ransom, perhaps it was all for naught.
Mother Mary, pray for us.
Our Lady, Mother of Sorrows, protector of the innocent, I search for you, I find you here, I find you in the silent solitude of mourning, I find you in the quiet breaths and controlled weeping. I fool myself into believing that the water falling from my eyes is the same that fell from yours, when they laid Him in your arms. Your Son, the incorruptible, how did it feel to hold him, smeared with blood and dirt, the iron nails driven through the delicate artwork of his hands, the thorns they tangled in his hair, a mockery made of Him, a message communicated? You would have thrown yourself away to keep Him from even a moment of pain. You cry for him, yes, but you cry for yourself, too: all these things we have lost. I hold myself and imagine you are with me. I rock myself to sleep, I convince myself I can feel your arms around me; I tell myself this water is the same water that flowed down your cheeks, two thousand years ago; I hold my own broken and battered body and imagine it is you that is weeping.
Mother Mary, pray for us.
Our Lady, Ever-virgin, Mother of Perpetual Help, recognize in me a broken one, a damaged woman; recognize in me a burning ember, a festering wound, six years old and growing older with each passing year; recognize in me the central seed of suffering that took a fourteen-year-old girl, shook her and swallowed her and spat her out. Her body is a vessel for fear. This woman I am now, she cannot look at her naked body without shivering. She cannot see the beauty in her brown eyes or quick smile. She cannot touch her own skin without flinching. She cannot let someone else touch her, hug her, embrace her, without being reminded – in the back of her mind – of the other awful things her body has felt. She must describe herself without “I.” Listen, you can hear her, even now, breaking down her body into the parts she hates and the parts she could sell, the parts she can’t look at without remembering and the parts she must present as a polished whole. They took her body from her and changed it. Inside, she remains at an immortal fourteen: long skinny legs and thin arms, flat chest, brown hair hanging stringy like twigs and eyes like a doe’s. Who is she now? She will never know. She lost the ability of changing herself. Her body is a map of a land foreign to her, one she is too scared to explore. She will forever remain in the safety of port.
Mother Mary, pray for us.
Our Lady, Queen of Martyrs, you saw me fall away in real time, you watched me carve up pieces of myself to placate that same screaming mob that called for your Son’s death. I have died, six times over; each year means a new death. Fourteen, then fifteen, then sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen – I have lived till twenty – and I am afraid I shall not live for many more. Each moment I am dying and being born anew; no iteration of myself will ever remain the same; and as long as time continues, so will I. The wounds become immovable landmarks, weathered by the wind but never fully erased.
Mother Mary, pray for us.
Our Lady of Consolation, allow me never to be consoled. Lend me your rage, give me your wrath, let me strain against the bindings holding me fast; let me tear down this cross and carve a club from it; let me beat them and beat them and beat them and beat them until they understand, they attempt to see, let me pull the beams from their eyes and ignore the splinters in my own and scream until my throat is thick with blood. They must see it, they must hear it, they must know it – the pain they have done to me – the pain that begins in my chest and wallows and snakes its way through millions of girls and women and men and boys and all the trapped ones – for we are all trapped, though we don’t know it yet, and the bars of our prison cells are made of the same iron as the nails driven through your Son’s hands and feet. I must be heard – I must live my life in a desperate attempt to be understood. I must calculate my feminine action, my feminine voice, I must cultivate it to be stronger, to be important, to BE! Lend me your rage, allow it to consume me, at least for a moment, for I would throw myself away on the off chance of being heard, something you know only too well.
Mother Mary, pray for us.
Our Lady, Queen of Angels, help me to find the strength to forgive them.
Mother Mary, pray for us.
Our Lady, Refuge of Sinners, how can I extinguish this roaring in my heart? For a fire consumes, even the fuel that gave birth to it; you are a Mother of Miracles, and I am a Mother of Malignance. A cancer kills, even the cells that give it life; you are the Chosen One, and I will choose to forget. I want to shed the weight that is killing me. How to forgive? And – how to be forgiven? Two states of BEING: I scoop up the spindly girl in my arms, she is all limbs and bones, she is giggling within her ribcage, she laughs because I catch her and hold her against the world, she smiles because she hasn’t known the truth yet, she loves me, she loves me, she IS me, I was once this little one, and I am her still. I hold her close; I focus on that love; I need her to know that I am here, I am safe. The body that was once battered and bleeding can be whole again. The body that was once can still BE. The body that was IS, and will continue to BE, and even though I wish I could keep her so young and beautiful in her own little way, in her own joyous innocence, I am a mother unto myself. Though I would throw myself away to keep her from even a moment of pain, I know too much. I am her refuge, yet I must set her free; all mothers must, as you know well. I let her live and die as she would, for it is through her many lives and deaths that I have become the mother she would have needed then.
Mother Mary, pray for us.
Our Lady, Queen of the Universe, help me to love myself like a daughter.
Mother Mary, pray for us.
Our Lady, Mother for the Journey, bless me with your courage and your serenity in my times of need. I am many things. I am lost; I am afraid. I am angry. I am unsure of the road ahead. I am unfamiliar with the territory. I am shouting; I am singing. I am doing my best. I am striking out, I am stepping forward, I am leaving port; I am moving on. I am weeping. I am working. I am making love, I am making art; I am in pain, I am healing. I am desperate, and I hope I am dancing; I am laughing, I am whole. I am a daughter and I am a dream. I am alive. I am trying. Most importantly, I am becoming; and though I may not BE yet, I know that one day, I WILL.
Mother Mary – pray, for me.