All liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. Rev. 21:8
I puked my prayers sweated in tangled sheets, Shadrach & Meschach’s sister alone in my white bed unafraid to burn, unafraid
of bones consumed by fire asking only to be free of the saints whose cardamom syllables stained your vampire’s teeth, to be free of you.
Five hundred times I penned my sin on wide-lined paper before dinner, wrote my death over and again, let the e and a loop and slip like stones skipped across the lake, let the rise and fall of the hard th swallow the lump in my throat.
I pinned my hungers in folds of flesh too thin to bite, fire and brimstone my obloquy, the wages of my wishes shipwrecked on some Canaan’s shore, a promised land of milk and honey you said I’d never see.
I tasted the fat on your fork tongued the cold curd of self-denial on bare plates, cut my flesh 100 times unclean, erasing you by erasing me.
Janet Reed is the author of Blue Exhaust (FLP, 2019), and a multi-year Pushcart Prize and Best of the Web nominee. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sow’s Ear Review, Emry’s, Tipton Poetry Journal, and others. She began writing knock-off Nancy Drew stories on wide-lined notebook paper at age 11, taught writing and literature in a community college until retirement and is currently enrolled in an MFA program in Creative Writing at University of Missouri-Kansas City.
