A House on Fire
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Blood stains the carpet and I wonder when we stopped being vegetarians. In this tin can house I am lover and loser because you take too long to come home and I take too much mercy on you. When you belong to her and I belong to you, there’s too much whiskey in this river to stop the twist of my tongue into a noose and you still won’t make it back before midnight. You come home with your liver leaking and an eagle’s whistle warning. Fingers curled around the curve of a new neck. You smell like roses I’ve never been given and I still iron your clothes and warm your dinner as you drag that brick and mortar body to bed. I don’t care about the fire you bring to our hearth when the chimney is choked up and breathing burns. We share nothing but the same crimson eyes. Maybe I miss you. Or the white of your teeth. Or the calluses of your hands before they sanded themselves down on my cheek. Most likely I hate you. And this house. And the scream of the door hinge at three in the morning. The smell of your rotting breath. Your feral fists kneading into the walls of the living room. I hope you die before you kill me. While Prometheus screams for mercy, I hope you take heed of the blood I spit at your feet.
Madeline Tran is a Vietnamese-American writer from Florida and a graduate of the University of South Florida. Her short stories and poetry are centered around the intricacies of women, people of color, mental illness, and how these all intersect. When she is not mulling over her writing she enjoys naps during thunderstorms and warm tea lattes.
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