A Memory of Salt
From behind him, always
Trailing, fatigued, uphill:
Two daughters,
The salvaged trinkets
Of a life inflamed
In brimstone.
A good man, her husband,
Hospitable,
Righteous,
On intimate terms with God.
But the minute she tried to
Capture their togetherness,
Turning her back on him for just an instance,
He made her into a memory of salt,
Gone with the first rain,
Melting seamlessly into the smoke
Of the furnace she used to call her home.
Her daughters, circling, uncorked the wine.