Then his wife said to him, “Do you still persist in your integrity?
Curse God, and die.”
— Job 2:9

Job was a rich man
who, in a trial of divine justice,
was dismantled of all he owned
by a fire that fell from heaven.
Sick and God-blinded, he repented.

But who speaks of his wife’s suffering?
Perhaps she was a woman who took great joy
in things and possessions and luxuries.
Perhaps she sat on heaps of soot,
itemizing the absolute sum of her loss,
calling out to God in argument, crying:

“In whom can I have faith
when the Giver takes that which is given?
And when the love of that
which is loved, and given, and taken,
is instilled in me by the Lover,
the Giver, the Taker?

“Now, I live for nothing.
I long for death, but it does not come.
And yet You have ensured
I survived to tell You this.”