***
Upon my graduation from the demonic witch school
in my hundred and thirty-second year,
I chose the name Kook,
Witch Kook,
and didn’t care how silly it sounded.
At least it wasn’t Isabel.
Witch Isabel
sounds like a question
my second grade teacher would ask,
“Which Isabel does this assignment
belong to, Isabel B. or Isabel D.?”
Yet nobody’s asking, “Which Kook
does this belong to?”
because they’re probably too afraid to ask.
At the age of one thirty-two,
Witch Kook
packed up all her supplies,
all her class notes
and potion recipes
and spell diagrams,
burned them in the fire
on Grickle’s head,
then pocketed a dozen matches
made of waxed demon scales
so she could perform the ritual to summon them back
wherever she needed.
Then she walked out the school’s doors,
hardly caring if she wound up in
prehistoric Australia
or burning Karth, home of volcanic dragons.
But maybe she should have cared.
Maybe none of this would’ve happened
if she had.
Though they always say that, don’t they,
“Maybe nothing bad would’ve happened,
if only I’d done this thing differently decades ago.”
The only ones who don’t say that are the ones
who graduated with a special focus in the strings of fate,
but I only took two of those electives, in my fifteenth and seventeenth years,
before and after you disappeared.
So I’m among the many in saying
I should’ve cared more
decades ago
but I didn’t, so,
I stepped from the doors of the school
into a new world
and only thought to look back
rather than run.
Jordyn Saelor 