My Bible is heavy now.
Not in its size,
But the burden of your words
Scratched between each line.

I used to trace these pages
And find light and wonder—
But now I wonder
How easily I believed
The stories told to me.

Now I flinch at familiar lines
And the most common of quotations—
Rearranged,
Deeply mistaken.

You made excuse after excuse,
Twisting blessings into bruises.
You carved loopholes into love,
Called cruelty a “calling,”
Named silence “submission.”

The simplicity of the Gospel
Was lost in your justifications—
Layered with anecdotes,
Disturbed by additions.

You rewrote the margins
With authority you were never given.
You added shame to grace,
And control to the cross,
As if Christ bled for your power.

Now I read with trembling,
Every verse a battlefield with arrows drawn—
A war between your stretched theology
And a fragile hope
That I will still hear
A sacred voice
In all this violence.