by Georgie Delgado
You can’t imagine the ease
with which we travel between towns
when none of your angry sword-swingers
remember to check the swamps.
Each one grows fat with our kind.
The mountains, too. At night,
we have often been mistaken
for high-rising trees, swaying
in the wind outside those caves
where even the oracles would lose
themselves amidst our undying.
Every life we enter
ends the same way:
screaming
fracturing
clanging
fire
and so we slither on, watching
all the little children being spun
god yarns in the comfort of bed,
“If you throw dirt into the hydra’s mouth,
all its teeth turn into skeletons.”
We have wondered at times
how it would feel to exist in a place
where that sort of thing was the truth.
and it is more difficult to believe in
with every passing year,
with every new pond of gore
left burning white hot and acidic.
Little ones, your time would be
better spent keeping this in mind:
the mouth of a demon
is hardly the kind of place
you want to go throwing dirt.
You might stir up a hunger
for your own bones.