metonymy4u

one ash wednesday she didn’t want anything
on her forehead. instead she had her father put the
smudge on her left upper cheek. her point was that the
church has been giving the black eye to original
peoples for untold centuries and she thought it was time
to tell the untold. to understand they were not nor
had ever been unwashed vermin, sins of flesh, a transgression
of mind or the off cast after thoughts of a god better occupied
with some manly affair of men. it was time and it was time
she declared so plainly that one could be dead and still hum
the tune, to give up many things. but most of all the idea
of a god who ruled a world created by words, words
he spoke most fluently in whatever story he might appear.