Laura Wittner

“Why Women Get Burned by the Oven"

We all have that little red mark somewhere.
On my left hand, the one I write with,
there’s my own oven burn.
If I stare at it awhile, it fans out into a triad
over the radius:
my wrist becomes three-dimensional
and, if I squint hard enough, I can see
my mother’s wrist, my grandmother’s
and, with one twist forward, my daughter’s, too,
covered with mosquito bites and smooth but
already resigned to the mark of the heated grill.”
― LAURA WITTNER