When our fasts and prayers failed, when incenses burned out, when our tear ducts deteriorated from use, the blood of our children lining the earth in crimson braids, our husbands’ corpses beckoning a maggot feast, when water wore the stench of death, and air waxed heavier than our feet, sandwiching us within itself, enveloping us in its smothering grasp, sapping life from our pores, we poured our faith into clay bushels and shattered them, buried our menses, and called forth a beast from the abyss, crying, “Save us! Heaven shan’t show its face! Doth hell hold any salvation yet?”
Benediction for Ice Cream by Ana Marie Boyd
I can still hear the slow jam jingle of the ice cream truck gliding along past our yellow house like it was riding on rails
April 30, 2026
