Burning Day
Allison Walter Luther
It’s been a long year.
I know the end is coming. My beginning.
It is time.
My burning day has arrived. Again.
I am alone, but not.
Strings pull me in every direction. Wife. Mother. Daughter.
Friend.
Enemy.
Society weaves expectations with those threads. Savior and curse. Temptation and sin.
Revered and reviled.
Lives and lives I have lived, in bindings that smolder with resentment.
Why must a woman burn in order to get some time alone?
I scream my triumphant rage to the sky as the purple flames embrace me, warm and
cleansing. Ash mixes with the snow, my own personal lye. I blink at the stars and stretch
my fledgling wings.
I will not apologize for the person I am becoming.
14
Cauldron Anthology