A Salem Love Letter

You will not read this letter in this lifetime. Those who do, will burn it. I write it nonetheless, for what my soul speaks to me is truth and perhaps setting the truth free from my soul, to let it bleed into the ink that stain these pages, will allow it to slowly heal this place full of lies.

I was drawn to this new world. This place that called for puritans: those of us who expunged luxury and enjoyment of the senses and dedicated our lives, hearts and souls to the adherence of the purest moral principles of our faith. God called to me to lead the people and I followed His call.

I came to this congregation with an eagerness to lead it, as is God’s will, and as my vows of pastorship asked of me. But, my disappointment set in swiftly as in the pews of my church words of love and kindness fell on deaf ears, and only messages of revenge and retribution ever found an audience.

Yet, I believed that it was God’s will to bring me here. God had asked me to guide this congregation of puritans to true purity. I led by example; loving, giving and forgiving. And I counselled those who came to me. And then, you arrived at my chapel door.

They say only a witch could ensnare a pastor’s soul in such a way that he would believe a woman when she said that her husband was a cruel, shameless, drunkard of a man. Only a witch could twist a pastor to state that a man had no right do discipline his wife. Only a witch could turn a pastor to the darkness so that he would not only forgive, but encourage a woman to leave the hearth of her home.

You came to me for words of guidance. My words brought you death.

And I, accused only for falling unwittingly for your trickery, was allowed to live. I, accused only of being unknowingly seduced by your evil magic, was allowed to continue being a pastor and leading the congregation if I should only repent and beg to be cleansed of you.

But, how can I do so with the memory of your husband leading the town to the chapel in the darkness of late evening? How can I cleanse the memories of the town dragging you out of my drawing room with shouts of your adulterous deeds? You did not defend yourself. They would not allow it. And yet, all you ever did during our moonlit meetings was shed tears of confidence and shared prayers with me at the only time when your husband had no more demands, insults or punishments left to heave at you.

But, perhaps they were right in their adulterous accusations. Though, unbeknown to them, they should have hurled those accusations towards me, not you. Albeit no deed of physical intimacy took place between us, and though my skin never touched yours, my thoughts endlessly did. I thought of nothing but you since the first time you came to me, to ask for guidance in bearing your marital loads.

Only hate was pure in the hearts of many of those who called themselves puritans. Love, came with demands. Love held a price. Love given was in expectation of obedience. Yet you, sentenced to a lifetime of misery by a marriage carried out purely for financial gains of your family, chose to give your husband the purest of your love. You, humiliated by your husband’s regular debauchery and blamed for his inconsistencies of character and his imbibing of alcohol until the whole of the town would hear his drunken rants in the wee hours of the morning…you chose to have hope in him. To continue to pray for him. To attempt to convince me, when I, as a messenger of the Lord, had no aspirations of his improvement left in me, that we should never lose belief in God and thus the potential of man.

I loved you. I love you still. I love you both in the purest, and in the most indecent ways there are.

I love you for the beauty of the words you used when you spoke, learned from the poetry you secretly read, and which your husband beat you for. I love you for the cures you made with the plants of the forest. The cures which you used to heal the ill, though the town spit at your feet and called you evil, even while their loved ones were made better with your medicines. I love you for the colorful ribbons that you placed in your hair to adorn it. They say that if you hadn’t bewitched me, I would have seen them as the immoral and vile vanity they were, used to ensnare men in the thralls of your beauty. But, I love you because I know they were your way of forgetting the dreariness of winter for a brief moment, and of bringing the joy of that burst of spring color in your hair, to all those who saw you. I love you for your voice, which sounded like the bells of the angels. They said your voice was Satan’s creation; a black art to lure and then poison. Yet, your words were always kind ones. If there was poison, your words would always be the antidote.

And yes, I also love you for your beauty. A beauty which was blamed on your vileness. Yet, how can that be, when God has created us in His image. Is your beauty then not a reflection of his?

But, more than anything, I love you for your faith. A faith that, to the very end, was greater than mine and the whole of this town combined. I love you for the greatness of your heart, able to forgive and hope when neither of those emotions should hae been possible.

And I love you, though you are gone.

Though I saw you burn.

And I loved you even more then in those last moments, even though I did not think before that such a thing was possible. My heart burst with love and utter admiration when you remained, to your very last breath, quietly and humbly looking up at the sky, while the flames took you. While they hurled insults at you. While your husband jeered. Not a sound came from your lips, while the others screamed and your flesh became ashes. Only the tears unwillingly fell; yours and mine.

They say I must purge your evil influence over my soul, lest I should end up in the depths of hell where they believe your own soul now resides. But, I can only believe, with every fiber of my being, that wherever your soul is, that is where beauty, truth and God reside. And so, I have refused to be cleansed of thoughts of you. I have refused to expel your hold over my being. If I am possessed by you, then so be it. I wish for nothing more than to be in your possession. And with those exclamations, I have secured my own place on the pyre. I go there now. Though I know I will not enter the afterlife with half the grace that you did. But, I will try my best, with hopes that your ashes light the fire that will bring me to you.