By Kristy Bowen

Given more time, you could have escaped. 

The winds, had they been fair, could have 

carried you across intact. After all,  

what utility in death, your breath as it caught the air 

like a sail. The soldiers with rats crawling their insides 

on the beach. 

They were so white in the moonlight, 

you stumbled and cut your foot on one of their ribs. 

Bruised your thigh on a broken wheel.  What usefulness in fear, 

heart beating fast as a fledgling? 

The gods and men and monsters in pursuit, 

the trail of blood at your heel. 

You could go thousands of miles and come back 

to this same impasse, the sand crusted over with starlight 

and the dead come round in packs to devour you. 

Like everyone, you believe your death 

will somehow be heroic. 

When the men called, you came. Your frame small 

and decked in flowers that made you itch and sneeze. 

You tried not to fidget, to wiggle inside your gown. 

The knife, the horizon, the vultures on the rocks.

But really, you were so scared, sobbing in your ropes. 

Begging the fathers that lined the shore. 

All of their hands soaked in blood one way or another. 

They’d raise a wet finger to the wind

  and sigh 

while you bled and bled. 

The goddess quiet in her little cave. 

The deer flashing white-tailed in the woods. 

When the wind was right, the sound of chanting 

would carry for miles inland. A wisp of altar smoke, 

the way the rain fell on stone steps outside the temple.

The women would gather the children in their skirts, this blessing 

or curse. The punishment or the reward. 

The earth was musky with mallow, rancid with spilled blood.

Nothing we could predict in tea leaves and tattered shrouds. 

Nothing anyone could protect that hadn’t already been 

ravished or ravaged by time. 

When your body became animal, spine extending, down on all

fours, you could hear the cracking of bones under the screaming. 

Your eyes gone black and round as swimming holes. 

Predator or prey, it didn’t matter. Your nails hardening to hooves, 

your heart cut clean through and shot with arrows. 

Everything lost. The moon, the boy with his tiny quiver. 

You could feel your panic slow and quiet beneath the hide. 

When they fed you carrots and flowers you opened your mouth wide. 

Let the animal burrow into you and through and through. 

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Kristy Bowen’s work has appeared recently in MARROW, GRIMOIRE, and COLLIDESCOPE. Her latest collection, WILD(ish) was released in May. Learn more at kristybowen.com