Ghosts In My Mind 5.11.2009 Poem by Margaret Alice

How awful, the ghosts of the nun’s biography
are alive in my mind, I cried as I walked down
the street, the songs in my earphones didn’t
enter my head, I’m still crying about Gabrielle
giving up her love to become a nun

Giving up her identity, confessing her every thought,
deed, preference, dream, as sin, doing penance for
every breath she takes, flagellating herself, no com-
panionship or conversation allowed, no comfort
or respite – it’s worse than hell

Worse than a concentration camp, the nun’s life was
devised by sadists and nuns were masochists, rejecting
everything God made as evil and sinful, cutting life and
nature out of them, maiming themselves… maybe I
should stop reading

The true story is so unsettling, I’m totally unbalanced,
can’t concentrate, feeling threatened, knowing so much
pain was not only condoned, but actively inflicted by
religion; one more proof that many ideas of godliness
originate in sick minds…

“The Nun’s Story” – Gabrielle van der Mal