Rabies

Aunt Shataflia was bitten by a dog and went rabid.
Rabies, then, was the worst of evils –
no one got better, everybody died.
We killed and buried dogs
so that the evil would not spread,
and we killed and buried the dog that bit Aunt Shataflia.
But what to do with the old rabid woman?
Only God could seize her spirit.
And yet the rabid can’t roam free.
We locked Aunt Shataflia in a barn, made a hole in the roof,
and poured buckets of water down onto her.
She shrieked all day and night and died in pain,
alone, she and God, her frozen eyes
open in torment.
No one was there to close them as she died.