BURNING HOUSE PRESS

saint of homeless shelters

imagine a whole room of us, braiding one another’s hair. imagine our hair, blackthick, imagine how it was braided together, by strand and by time. three girls brushing my hair at a wide dirty window, while six strangers smoke cigarettes in the garden below. at least half of them will not live. imagine us girls in the window looking down. how half of us will become our mothers. we eat a communal dinner, speak a communal prayer, sorrow spilling tang and blood water, catastrophe hands ripping wet bread and steeple prayers. dio, we say, are you here now? a church bell tolls, the summer light burns silent, doors shut, bodies writhe, and we think we are saved. imagine a whole house of women battered and bad, bodies crushed by ill and their children. waiting on god. count until forever and that is the sound I remember.