Toward the Light from the Ashes

After seven years of marriage, I was his collateral for a debt, the ATM in my mother-in-law’s eyes.

I had boiled all my love and hope into a bitter medicine made from my trampled dignity.

Until forced kneeling in the chapel shattered my knee, until the call from my dying father was cut off without mercy—

I finally saw clearly that the man who kept saying he loved me had never truly cared whether I lived or died.

This debt settlement called marriage was due to end.