Bless This House (Then Burn It Down)
She counts the plates in rigid order, ritual of a shrinking day,
every fork and napkin placed to appease the violence she cannot say.
Silence settles, thick as ritual, sealing the room in a film of dread,
hatred curdles in the corners where forgiveness is bled.
He prays in booming cadence, mouth slick with liquor and sermon’s lie,
blessing his own hands before turning them to bruise.
Holy words ring down the hallway while rage is bottled and disguised.
Neighbors hear the crash and thud–each impact a test of faith they refuse,
windows close, the world turns, nobody ever asks what’s true.
The preacher raises hands to heaven, speaks of mercy no one sees,
her face blooms with purple grace, concealed beneath apologies.
He quotes scripture, voice honeyed with threat,
psalms and bruises exchanged in secret duet.
Ribs crack in sanctified rooms, theology written in fractured bone,
she learns to smile, to hide the knife,
sanity distilled into the lies she must condone.
Faith is the costume, the robe the shield,
force is the text, the scripture sealed.
No one lifts the twisted page,
no hands disrobe the holy cage.
Sanctity written over pain,
a household kneels to violence, sanctified by shame.
Bless this house, the lie repeats,
the walls are painted with defeat.
Every prayer said beneath the cross,
a meal served to mask the loss.
Glass crunches under trembling feet,
in this cathedral where agony and God meet.
He offers verses as commands, thin sheets of piety folded and handed down,
she clutches them with shaking fingers, hides her wounds beneath his crown.
Above the bed the cross hangs clean,
she erases every trace of where she’s been.
Nothing holy remains, only the erasure of her past,
each night rewriting survival in order to last.
She burned the linens, memory first, then flame to the beds they shared,
no angel intervened, no prayers declared.
She lit the match with a single vow:
“I won’t be buried beneath this house, not now.”
Fire ate the curtains, the sacred shroud,
no more hymns to muffle sound.
Bless this house? She turns away,
let ashes bear her true escape.
She did not sin, she did not fall,
she simply refused to die for them all.
Now the ruins carry her only name–
no soul repeats his holy shame.