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“There is nothing for you
In Mesoamerica”
A Mexican oracle chides me
For seeking remedies
To a lifetime of ailings
From an alien culture
“Remember the mist and the moss
Teeming in your veins
Child of Tuatha de Danann
Remember your name”
He foretells how I will love in this life
Kisses my cheek and proffers
Six books and a dream
A dream that delivers me
To an underworld highway
Of dank, dark canals
Ferried by canoe
For I cannot tiptoe on shadows
Like the cult of imps
Tittering from the bankless edge
“Unworthy”
“A waste”
“She should not be here”
“Never have what it takes”
“Send her back”
“Not for us to decide”
“She was summoned”
“Let her stay”
I am passaged to your forge
Glowing orange like your hair,
Like you,
A wooden room
In the mantle of the earth
Where I first learn to worship
Reverent, at your feet
You wear a purple cape like royalty
You say to me
“Child you came early
There is something you still do not know
Return to me when you do”
You splay five clues on your table
Three cards, cloaked figures
Cut in shapes of grim reapers
The fourth, a crown
Crested by musical notes
In billowing smoke
And a mole familiar as the fifth
A guide for the depths
I clutch him in my teeth
And wake with your name, new, on my lips
(From a Pantheon better suited
To a girl with spackled, frost-pink skin)
Brigid.
For six months I worship the sun
And give it your face
Offering oranges, burnt cinnamon
I pray to be free from a prison of pain
I excavate my misdeeds
I get off on my shame
I learn there is no virtue in victimhood
But ecstasy, all the same
That there is no sin
In wielding the executioner’s blade
For the hands that hold the hilt
Are the same ones gibbeted
As Sophia intended
Duality transcended
So I descended.
And when two men who loved me wrong
Died at their own hands
And a third who loved me well
Lost an innocent
I lit three candles and wept
Then went to see a band
With King in their name
My false friends wore forked tongues
And I danced in their flames
As the rhythm unspooled
The sun rose above the stage
It bequeathed a secret mantra
That rolled through me in waves:
I
Choose
Not to heal.
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Reader insights
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Compelling and original writing
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Excellent storytelling
Original narrative & well developed characters
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Comments (1)
What a magical and powerful adventure it was to read this. Full of emotion and the ending...wow. Loved it 😍