Jesus Freak
She got me at my most vulnerable.
Five years older and rocking the cradle.
This Jesus freak living in Letitia Heights.
And she broke me down and strung me along.
Stole money from me when I had nothing.
Living it up while I slept on the street.
During the cold Canadian winter.
Digging latrines with my bare hands
in the permafrost of the forest.
And later, after an aunt and uncle took me in.
Demanding celibacy because of her religion.
Eventually cheating on me so the humiliation
was complete.
And when that wasn’t enough,
she burned the only pictures of me as a baby
which I had been young and dumb
enough to give her to hold onto.
It wasn’t enough to just humiliate me.
She had to destroy any record of my existence
at all with the burning of those pictures.
She had to rub me out completely.
This good god-fearing creature.
Sitting in church service each Sunday.
With hands on lap.
But she failed as they always do.
I did not die or kill myself,
although I came close.
And now, there is only this poem.
Written about her and never for her.
She has already taken enough.
©2022 Ryan Quinn Flanagan All rights reserved.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Cajun Mutt Press, Outlaw Poetry Network, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.