A Wife’s Guide to Silent Perishing

— for the women whose only language is endurance

Aisle//
This walk down it, is how you secure
the license to bend without breaking,
to ingest nails without calling the doctor.

Stay//
Eat his fist with your lips
widened; the kind of lips you wear when
eating your favourite dish.

Cry//
Scoop the leaking from your eyes and make
him a warm bath. Add salt for his cleansing.

Fix//
Flay your thigh; patch the blistered fist.
Scoop the bleeding from you,
replenish his. A god should not lack.

Train//
Catwalk on glass shards; to drill your soul
to master pain, to drill your legs to forget to run.
Your life is no life when you leave the man.

Pray//
To God to fold your tongue, keep it from
venting. To submit means, to never be right.
Read the good book. Memorize who should succumb.