Plaid Skirt Gospel

Twelve years old and already an insufferable non-conformist in plaid.
Got kicked off the cheerleading squad for sniffing White Out like it might erase me.
Forgiveness in fumes.
Exile in one deep breath.

Had no friends.
Just a Walkman, a spiral notebook full of swear words, and a pair of craft scissors.
I used them to cut my own hair in the bathroom stall like I was severing ties with every rule that never protected me.

Wore my uniform wrong on purpose.
Socks slouched, shirt wrinkled, no vest, rosary beads wrapped like armor.
If I was going to hell, I was going fashionably.

Religion was ironically my best subject.
Sister Conrad said my questions were disrespectful.
I think they were just inconvenient.
I asked if Mary gave informed consent.
If saints could be queer.
If Hell had a section for girls who said “goddamn” with feeling.

They made me write
“I will not disrupt the moral order”
in detention so many times the cafeteria wall started praying with me.

I didn’t mind.
That was the first place they let me write anything that mattered.

I passed my tests but failed at being submissive.
Said “fuck” like a prayer.
Spelled “shit” in bubble letters on my binder.

In sex ed I asked if priests ever took vows of silence because they had too much to confess.
Asked if Jesus had a safe word.
They said I was a disruption.
I said, “Good.”
I got two days’ suspension and a reputation for being “dangerously articulate.”

The expulsion felt like a witch hunt.
They called my mother in like she was the executioner.
Handed down my paperwork like it was a death sentence.
But all I saw was release.

They said I was corrupting the other girls.
I think I just reminded them they had options.

I left without blessing, but with eyeliner sharp as sin and a mouth full of verses no one had the guts to canonize.

And this — this is my gospel now:
curse early, question everything,
and never kneel for less than love.

I wasn’t a dropout.
I was ahead of my time.
An exorcism in a school uniform.
Too loud, too weird, too goddamn sacred to sit still while the boys got forgiven and the girls got small.

They didn’t expel me.
They handed me the match and told me to light the altar myself.