The priest smears the dark—a cross.
The paste of burned palm an anointing
The symbol of mythic penitence.
But repentance eludes me, the turning from sin.
I want to smear the black across my teeth
the way old women do with snuff and spit.
An endless night, the universe, a curse.
I am at home with blood and death and loss. That epiphany
every woman knows the day life rips from her womb.
In that sunlit church, genuflecting before
that tortured body of hope, I curse you.
I will leave you the way flame curls from wood
smoke giving half-hearted chase. This is
how I leave you. In my heart. Leave you.
In my mind. Leave you. In my desire.
With a relentless burn I leave you.
What remains, curdled by water boiling over
from the rice pot is not mere ash.
Not even night. Or the erasure of things
once alive. This thing is more. A devastation
no wind can lift. This is how I leave you.
Copyright © 2025 by Chris Abani. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 15, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
