Job

“What do you know about justice?” groaned the mountain on my back.

The corrosion of its granite and stone digging into my spine, like

Switch blades to the bandit’s thumb.

We don’t inch under pounds of pressure.

“What do you know about justice?” Barks my father.

He spits brimstone in a fiery whirlwind on the hands of his making,

My hands of his making,

We don’t hold hands at the dinner table anymore.

“What do you know about justice?” spits the Leviathan,

Its scales of cloudy white scraping like pottery to

the unjust boils, the toils on Job’s(my) neck.

We play hide and seek with my restlessness;

He almost doesn’t leave enough breath for faith: for “justice.”

“What do you know about justice?” begs the innocence in my sisters.

They glance upwards from the aftermath of my power struggle with temptation,

imitating crisis with feigned brokenness and

scattering pieces of themselves across their wrists.

We sing ring around the rosie in light of the irretrievable smolder in the house that built us.

We don’t know how to be honest. We don’t know how to stop bleeding.

“What do you know about justice?” whispers my trembling conscience.

A steady breath of flame ignites its survival in the heaving of my chest,

I don’t want to settle anymore for cinder-centered promises to decay in my wake,

I want to burn.

“What do you know about justice?” demands the God of my father.

He walks the tightrope of Knowledge and Power, interplaying opposites at my expense.

I ask him, “Why? Why have you forsaken me?”

He doesn’t just respond in rage and dominance. He is a theophany of rise and rebirth, the ultimatum of life and death:

I know there is no retributive justice in the sin and suffer,

I know only dust to dust.

“What do you know about justice?” urges the God of my heart.

We turn on flashlights under our blanket fort, exchanging ghost stories of the past

And the future to come.

As the shadows of our history blink nervously in the light of reconstructive coping,

The dawn enlightens my daydream.

No one has promised epiphany, but I am not alone.

“I know you, God. I know freedom.”