by Betty Stanton
Hands smelled of smoke long before the match was struck. We stacked the wood too high, and it swayed with the weight of grief. The fire took its time choosing which bones to touch. Ash gathered in our throats, and we swallowed without protest. Someone said the word sacrifice, but it tasted like salt. Even the stars refused to watch. “God is ash,” whispered the chimney, and the night bent low to listen. We kept waiting for flames to confess something more than heat, but fire names only what love cannot. It spelled our losses in a script of embers across the ground, letters dissolving before we read them. In the end we were left with smoke rising in spirals of teeth, gnashing their way into the sky. We breathed it in as hymn, as gospel. It burned our lungs into prayer.