Letter 5: gas stove

You pulled hell out of the bowels of the earth,

Knowing that I’d wade through such flames for you,

When you left me in black ashes that caught in my mother’s throat like tar,

I still begged you to stay,

I prayed for God to save me from the devil

& then tore up the sky in fits when you did not arrive at my door each night

Instead of breaking up with you, I broke up with God,

Reaping in the anguish of a fallen sky, red and burning

You stripped from me peace like corn from its husk,

I mistook my own wailing for hymns in the night,

Your faithless touch left bright red welts on the rolling plains of my body,

Devouring crops of the honest and the poor in your indelible flame,

I lay draped in embers of my old self, waiting for the Wind to take us away

Submitted by Mariam Qureshi