***
strike
fire
fight
light
lead us on
to where it’s bright
Witch Kook
positive psychologist
left the fish people to themselves
and went back home,
near as she remembered,
and of course
the forest
had taken over
that suburb site
but she
chopped down a little sapling by hand,
burned it green,
and spoke a prayer to the sky
carried by the smoke
for the little girl
who grew up here
even though
I was her
and I don’t know what the point is
of praying for yourself
hundreds of years ago.
Maybe,
she became who she did
because of me, here,
wishing her
the power
to conquer fate.
Or perhaps
prayers
to stupid strings of fate
accomplish nothing
and the little
school girl
with her best friend
just came stumbling across power
and infinite realms to scour,
and if she hadn’t,
she would’ve retired,
lived to ninety,
and died
before whatever apocalypse
took out Brisbane
and the place where she grew up
and probably most earth civilization,
and she’d never have known
much of anything
yet thought herself
wise for her age.
Isabel
would just be a woman
who never thought of
ending her traitor heart
or killing fates
then searching out happiness
in fish folk she made.
Not that she found it, necessarily.
But she found something, temporarily,
and went chasing after
its siren call
in the storm,
since if she closed her eyes
it was like
the whole world
sunk to silence
except for that voice–
and it wasn’t a voice
of hunger
or control
or power
but one
that beckoned her to be
an ember
coaxing strangers into the warmth.
***
Jordyn Saelor 