Tag: ex-Mormon

  • This is a new poem called “your god is a boning knife” about my time in the Mormon Church.

    the god of your dreaming world is a boning knife
    made to pry black from white
    good from evil, the same from the other
    the wheat from the chaff
    you’ve made the sacred into a weapon, a tool
    and reality into delusion

    the god of your dreaming world is a crowbar
    made to pry denial from the self
    love from fear (to you, they are one and the
    same)
    blood from stones, beauty from ashes
    until the souls you’ve carved in the name of
    perfection, divine judgment, are not souls anymore
    they are vessels for your unholy scripture
    and their too perfect smiles don’t look
    joyful to me anymore
    they look like silent screams

    the god of your dreaming world is a club
    you use words to bludgeon when you can
    no longer pry
    slow violence and promises of an unsafe world
    outside of these walls to
    keep followers in line
    you’ve made faith into such a violent thing
    I never want to touch it again for fear of holding
    the same weapons you used against me

    the god of your dreaming world is a noose
    and I am still suspended upside down by my
    left ankle when I sleep sometimes all these years
    later
    as the blood rushes to my head I wonder what I
    did to deserve this, how I fell for this
    as I scream for someone to cut me down

    I got out from under the shadow of your god
    just barely
    I am not perfect, I don’t want your vision
    you will not pry anything else from me

    -Peri 11/18/2025