begged for it to be affection./there was a room, in the basement,/my husband told me never to enter./i wondered, if like bluebeard,

Burn It Down
Christina Ladd

Third down the street on the left
Old brown house
A little overgrown,
But as they say
Strong bones

I will drill holes in my own strong bones
To fill them with fire
I will pluck out my eyes
And set the sockets with flint
So that when I scrape my gaze
Over this place
It will catch.

Do you know what twenty years of fear
Will do to a person?
It’s twenty years of
Running water on a marble statue
Wearing me away

No more.
The glaciers have fled,
The rainforests have burned,
Everything bows in the end
To fire.
Even the gods feared
What we would do with it
And what I am confronting
Is so much less
Than a god.

I might be a god
The god of heat
And light
The god of the first curl of smoke
Like a baby’s finger
Gripping your own
New life from old patterns
To defy
—not a house—not a home—
But a heap of dry bones

‘Shall these
Bones live?’
No, but I shall
Live
I shall
Burn
With living