Let Me Show You Hell

⚠️ Trigger Warning:

This poem contains graphic depictions of childhood abuse and religious trauma. Please take care when reading.

Let me show you hell.

I have been the child,

Snuggled soft, safely tucked,

Bed covers tight, burritoed in warmth —

Safe, innocent, swaddled, sleeping.

Four years old.

It began in the dark:

A large hand clapped over my mouth,

Father’s calloused grip iron, silencing screams.

Carried in night-black to the barn out back,

Church’s cross mounted on temple’s false.

Dimly lit interior. Folded chairs.

Pulpit center-raised. Pastor seated, judgingly.

Dad sets me down, ignoring tears.

Pastor speaks: “Evil spirits must be purged by blows —

A child who speaks with the voice of God

Is unrighteous… and feared.”

Over knee bent, in darkest night,

Chapel’s church-home dimly alight.

Malignant mercies as blows rain

On unprotected flank.

Cries of anguish from a child who spoke God.

Punishment for inherent evil, as they applaud.

After the blessed end of rained blows,

Pastor, witness and ordained, retires to comfort’s home.

Father, with finger raised, addresses:

“If you tell anyone, I will come again in the night —

To snatch you,

And repeat the fright.”

Brutalized.

Betrayed.

Threatened.

Lain in a bed once safe — now stolen.

No tears, as fear of repeating rises.

Broken. Bruised.

Joy lost.

Innocence martyred.

The child, dead,

Now weeps within.

“Holy Father…”

“You have loved me…” as bed shifts beneath a weighted hand.

Yeshua, present with the child’s death,

“Comfort me,” I whisper.

He rests within me and beside me —

“I am scared.”

With breath so tender,

Lips to temple touch.

“You are loved, my child,”

Whispered

as an answered prayer.