when you burned down my house
i tried to rebuild: monuments of soot
trampled beliefs trying to pull meaning
from the inside of a cedar tree
and i carved. i carved you, next to
a motherless god, a wifeless god,
a god that poured fires over still
waters and begged to be left alone
behind a curtain, gold rods and gold seams
fraying at the end like the veins
that tied me to you, kept us sprouting
branches instead of scorched forest,
the center of the earth crumbling into
itself a dead leaf;
a home turned skeleton.

– Alyssa Hanna