by Jessica Khailo

 

 

 

When I learned God had a wife

we weren’t supposed to know about,

 

I folded her name into a loaf of bread

with ginger, star anise, cinnamon,

 

and fed it to my family, hoping warmth

could mimic remembrance, devotion.

 

I listened for their sighing in the night

and heard “Asherah,” through the boughs

 

of hazel near my window. “Asherah,”

in the fluttering of dreaming lids.

 

“Asherah,” as a swaddling fog

to hold us until morning.

 

And I wonder if we can ever

know her well enough

 

to draw her, unfiltered, out from

the overgrowth of sacred wells,

 

reaching our hands through

thorny brambles as a sacrament

 

to every invisible mother we

never meant to forget.

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(*This poem was first published in Door = A Jar Magazine, issue 26, Spring 2023)