Apocalypto

blood_ 

in my village, a six-year-old girl became a canvas & her once clear skin was a shrine carved with obscene figurines. sharp machete-like pencils with clear lines cut through her skin like tattoos & she bled crimson flowers. 

fire_

the moon & the stars hid their beam & betrayed us. the only glows were yellow embers & black smoke that flew from the structures we called home once. we raced breathlessly into the starless night, embracing the darkness we dreaded. 

water_ 

i think my neighbor’s alarm broke again. i didn’t hear their feet dragging languidly. their mother’s sonorous voice & their gruesome banter at the well didn’t permeate my dream. 

‘god must be good,’ i smiled to myself. till i saw their heads and their bodies standing apart. 

 how do you hold the ocean in your fist? 

spirit_

i was told at seven that the blood of an innocent boy once cried & his murderer got an achilles foot. 

i do not believe ghosts exist anymore, grandpa lied. dead bodies only become dirt & whisk away with the wind. 

earth_

i fear my eyes are 

becoming a reservoir

of cascading water (tears)

& it’s getting harder

to keep it in.           

 ‘dust to dust, ashes to ashes’,

the priest reads & hurls a stone to my chest with his tongue (words) & kindles the fire in my nose (burns) & i convulse on the ground beside my brother’s grave. 

word_

white: the color of the pristine coat on the pretty woman standing beside my bed. 

 ‘what do you remember from last night?’ she asks. 

/my lips swear an oath of secrecy/ with my tongue & hides/ the truth in the locket/ dangling in my throat. /she shakes her head in disbelief/ her face white like her coat. / 

/no! like the color of fear/. 

how do you master the knife?

you don’t get caught (cut)!

a tear escapes my left eye as my mother pushes her broken body (matted in bandage) towards me, eyes sore & swollen. 

she smiles weakly ‘one of them was arrested. he’ll be taken to the rehabilitation center’ she says to me.

Source: From the Isolation Issue (September 2020)