on october 13, 2021, i became myself

we shared a home (my body),

a quaint little thing

oh so charming

we lived together in droves.

its witch-girl, so blind

to the future,

feels the fervor

of an apocalypse alighting.

the four horsemen are on the horizon-line:

lances steadied, up,

bullets in their blunderbuss,

famine, proud, with a crown upon his head.

near two decades of no harvest leaves

the village

so ill,

dying.

how long can a human being survive hunger?

thirst?

what does starvation taste like?

(is it the inside of our own mouth?)

its witch-girl, a self-

sacrifice,

rotting corpse clouded by flies

gives herself to a lofty stranger.

a nineteen-year drought on the backs of my hands,

broken by rivers of veins

and capillaries bloomed

in the twentieth year’s monsoon.