“Father Forgive Me”

By TIMI NIPRE

Father, forgive me,
for I stand before you with a heart torn open.
I was once your bride, clothed in white,
my lips trembling with vows,
my fingers clinging to rosary beads
like a child clutching her father’s hand.

I believed in your house.
I believed the cross was a shelter.
But within the walls of prayer,
wolves wore cassocks,
and the chalice was filled
not with wine but with silence.

They called me daughter,
but their eyes stripped me bare.
They called me sister,
but their hands unmade me.

I learned to bow not to You,
but to the terror of footsteps at midnight,
to doors that opened without knocking,
to whispers that reeked of incense and deceit.

Father, forgive me,
for I stopped singing the psalms.
How could I,
when my throat was swollen with cries
that the choir drowned out?
When the chapel bells tolled,
they rang like shackles.

Every Mass became a wound reopened,
every hymn a mockery of my silence.
I wanted to love You, Lord.
But Your house became a graveyard of my youth.

I buried my laughter beneath the altar.
I buried my body beneath my habit.
I buried my trust beneath their sermons.

Forgive me if I rage now.
Forgive me if I spit at their sacred robes.
Forgive me if I no longer kneel,
if I call their holiness a lie,
if I say Your sanctuary was complicit
in the crime against my soul.

Father, forgive me—
but do not mistake me.
I am not confessing sin.
I am confessing survival.
The sin was never mine.
It was theirs,
and You watched in silence.
So forgive me if I abandon Your altar,

if I burn the veil,
if I curse the hymns.
Forgive me if I walk away
from a Church that devoured me whole.

I was Your bride.
They made me their prey.
Now I am neither.
Only a scar,
only a ghost,
only a woman crying at heaven’s closed doors.

Father, forgive me—
for I can no longer forgive You.
So please I ask that you please forgive me.

Timi Nipre
27th September 2025.

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