Keeper of the Hearth

Her pride burns steady, keeping the hearth warm.

She is the mother of Fiacre and Lucien
the one who gave the first wife’s husband two sons
and with that, a place of pride.

Her body carries the quiet weight of early mornings,
the fire lit before the sun.

But her pride has edges.

Each time another woman is named,
her gaze sharpens like flint.

Her jealousy is not hidden
it stands beside her like a second shadow.

Yet within it burns
a fierce kind of love:

for her sons, for her house,
for the place she claimed as her own.