It Wasn't Roaring, It Was Weeping: Interpreting the Language of Our Fathers Without Repeating Their Stories

by Lisa-Jo Baker

make eye contact with them both and I can’t look away. Like a mouse mesmerized by a cobra, I am utterly focused on the truth right before me. There is no unknowing now that I know. To ignore what is right before me is to choose ignorance; to pretend the cobra isn’t real is to choose death. I want to choose life. So I choose knowing. I choose truth.

can be too easy to listen to our fears, to our peers, to our parents. To let them drown out the voices rising in lament from behind a wall we don’t want to acknowledge is real. Fear dresses up in socially acceptable intentions.