how empty sits the room once filled with his laughter. how like a womb scrapped clean it has become. a city of exile. an utter desolation. i close the door behind me. the weeping of his sister—cutting through our walls like a knife through the throat—is matched only by his mother’s screams. how the Lord has made her suffer. this grief envelopes. barbed wire around the heart, a plastic bag over the head. bitterness churns my stomach to bile on the bathroom floor. but the Lord is good to those who wait for Him in silence, mouths filled with dirt. His compassion will not be absent forever. His mercies will lift the weight crushing precious things when the unseen is accomplished. today she will not be comforted.
Matthew E. Henry (he/him) is an educator, essayist, and occasional fiction writer. He is the author of the full-length collections Said the Frog to the Scorpion (2024), The Third Renunciation (2023), and The Colored Page (2022), as well as the chapbooks Have You Heard the One About…? (2023), Dust & Ashes (2020), and Teaching While Black (2020). He serves as editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal and as nonfiction editor of Porcupine Literary. Henry holds an MFA, an MA in theology, and a PhD in education. His collection, Promises to Keep, is now available from Wayfarer Books. He writes about education, race, religion, and dismantling oppressive systems at www.MEHPoeting.com
