Making the Beds in a Burning House

Photo image of fire, burning wood crackling in the night

By Bethany Dixon

Now that the world has ended

you ask me where your coffee is.

I comb shards of glass from my perfect hair

smooth my apron with its bloody handprints

and tell you what I have been waiting to say.

I am done keeping one hand on the cradle,

one foot in the grave

Done holding your place at the table

forgiving your sins because “that’s how men behave”

This isn’t confession; I am no priest.

My kind of holiness scares the hell out of those

greased pigs in white robes.

I am making the beds in a burning house

watching each mouse scamper back to her hole

and I am done letting that story be told.

The women I love, they all know your face.

They’ve wept in your bed. You try

to erase us, but grace comes from holding

the thing we fear most

looking into its eyes

and letting it go.

Bethany Dixon is a writer, baker, and pianist living in Ithaca, NY. She works in a tower of books at Cornell's Olin Library by day, crafting poems and pastries by night. Her poetry has been published in the Connecticut River Review, with work forthcoming in the North American Review. Bethany's current work focuses on reclaiming female narratives from ancient Greek texts.