The secret police

Poetry

Trigger warning: Animal abuse

We let you into our home

We allowed it

We didn’t know we had a choice

How many families feel the same?

We allowed you power over us

We didn’t know how to fight it

You came like the secret police

investigating a spiritual crime.

We are hidden from society

No advocates have we

No organizations investigating the enforcers

No one lobbying on our behalf.

We took whatever you gave us.

We had no recourse.

If you decided we were OK, then we kept our place

in God’s Kingdom.

If you decided that we weren’t, then we lost everything.

Did you know how much power you had?

Did you think of it as power?

Did you enjoy just a bit how we bobbed and curtsied and offered you coffee?

… Did you think of it as your right?

Lord knows that anyone who stood up to you

Would cause you to bristle

Because nobody did.

Nobody ever did.

But I did once.

I turned the tables on you.

When those young men threw a live chicken into a fire

And tortured a stolen lamb during a bachelor’s party.

I called you. I said you who had knowledge of these things,

You needed to call the police.

And how you bristled!

You didn’t bow or scrape to me.

You didn’t bob nor curtsy.

Who was I, a young woman, to question you, a member of the church board?

You sounded angry.

Not wise. Not loving. Not grieving over the sins of these young men.

And I have to tell you now, these many years later,

That you were not OK.

You were not OK.

You deserved to lose your place.

But the secret police protect their own, don’t they?