“Yoder . . . never disputed the 13 charges”
—The Mennonite, January 2, 2015
If boys will be boys and girls are sugar and everything nice
then we see how one girl can become a preservative, staving off
the boy’s rot so he doesn’t taste off, sour, to the rest of us though he
tastes each girl eventually in turn and she and she and she and she
and she and she and she and she and she and she and she and she
and she preserves the meal with sugar and silence, by which I mean not
not speaking but not being heard so she and she and she and she and she
and she and she and she and she and she and she and she and she learns
to cut the pie, pass out the pieces without flinching. And if God should
look down and set the truth free, let the church lament that he is a prisoner
to the truth. Let the church disrupt the hands that stitch this story,
let her sing that silence is golden, that she and she and she and she and she
and she and she and she and she and she and she and she and she is bronzing
the only gold we have, God, he is a good man, a man who has done so much good
and if on the way he put glue in her sugar, yes we could taste and see it
or we could tell her to drink the cup given to her. She and she and she
and she and she and she and she and she and she and she and she and she
and she interrupted while he was still speaking. She and she and she and she
and she and she and she and she and she and she and she and she and she moved
his dirty laundry from kitchen to sanctuary, a trail of holy men behind shoving shirts
back into the basket, saying pray on it, against it, suffer nobly through it, in silence
of it, for sugar, for everything nice, by which they mean everything silent
enough to hear him speak for he is a good man, a man
who has done so much good, a salt of the earth man
and she and she and she and she and she and she
and she and she and she and she and she and she
and she is a sweet woman, a sugar and salt
of the earth woman, a preservative twice over.