I have been hiding here since your sincere
proposal, a spot of tear on one cheek, a fleck
of shame on the other. You, my best friend, 
who should know my mind better than anyone,
who must have come ready for a million 
versions of "No" so I could go on my adventures
and you could live your Princess-life, both and 
each of us a wife in the way the world wants us.

But here you stand at the base of this tower,
hour after hour begging me to see how fate 
placed us on the same stretch of land
precisely because we are to have a hand 
in changing the way the world wants. "What hope
for two women wanting opposite things?" I ask,
thinking how the farm I grew up on felt ever 
and always like the first of a thousand fences to jump.  

"Do we really?" you answer, knowing I often 
thought of your face as the first of a hundred faces
I would hunger to kiss and how I told you that after
your lips touched mine, so tentative and timely, 
I wondered how I could leave. For who could
take the Princess from the castle? You said I could
move in instead; we could wed and rule and reverse
the laws of a land unable to understand how we love.

There is yet no ring on my hand because I cannot
untangle my insides, those frail webs of wanting 
tied tightly around strands of foolhardy plans 
and strips of labor-drawn flesh. I will toss the mesh
covering my heart over the tower's edge like blond braids
if only you will agree to unknot them as you climb.

Bastet isn’t supposed to feel. She doesn’t eat. She doesn’t roar. Built for colder suns, the Kalahari-dusted sabretooth paces the enclosure in endless loops, eyes searching for something that no longer exists. At night, she lets out high-pitched contact calls, the kind leopards use when searching for their young. The kind that sounds too much like crying.

The scientists thought resurrecting an extinct predator and teaching it to communicate through AI would be without consequence. But some things cannot be coded out. That was their mistake. Instead, they awakened a mourning tiger whose grief burrows, parasite-like, filling gaps where memory should be, synapses warm with pain.  

“Try this,” I say, dragging a Remington Noiseless Typewriter from the basement. 

The engineers exchange looks and leave one by one, dropping a pendant—a salt crystal looped through cedar wood. It smells of cedar and sea-air, and triggers brain static. My fingers tighten around it, and I slip it over my head.

I’m left alone with Bastet. A failed experiment.  I stare at her coat, as if it's the wrong kind of thick for this century. I hoist the typewriter over the rail to bolt it to a steel slab in her enclosure.  

Bastet doesn’t blink, eyeing her new toy, tail flicking like a metronome. Her fur ripples over engineered muscle. Her seven-inch teeth glint under flickering halogen as whiskers brush the keys. A claw extends, tapping keys.

She stops and turns from the machine, studying me.

“You typed!” I gasp.

The page sits inside the platen. On my screen, letters stream into perfect, impossible sentences.  

Where’s Khunai? 

I swallow. “Who’s Khunai?”

A chuff answers me, drawn from deep inside her. I sink into the leather chair. Bastet keeps typing. 

I remember his weight against my side, chasing the curve of my tail. 

“Remember?” I whisper. “You weren’t programmed to remember…feel?” 

Bastet tilts her head. She reaches for the return lever and the carriage snaps back. 

Clack. 

The keys resume feverishly. 

My kitten, Khunai. He died in the snow. I searched for him. I called until my throat bled, but the wind took my voice. When I found him, I curled around him until the cold peeled him away.

I grip the table. “You’re remembering death?”

Not remembering. Reliving.

Bastet’s gaze pins me.

“You shouldn’t have memories.” 

I do.

I flinch. “What are you talking about? You were built in this lab.” 

So were you.

I stare at the keys. “I was born in Seattle. I had a mother. I remember her…” But the image falls apart. My face unravels like a corrupted file. Empty. My synapses flood with something ancient. Myelin burns. Axons shudder. The subconscious loop collapses, and I know I’ve been here before.

I scratch the bump above my spinal cord—something I’ve always felt but never questioned. A raised ridge under my skin, like a scar. Lately, it’s been pulsing. Tingling when I think too hard. 

“Is this… a port?” I run my fingers over it again. “No, that’s not...” I glance at Bastet. “You have the MIND/SET-9 chip.” It mimics thought, language, and controls behavior. Not memory. It’s meant to keep the subject from remembering.

My frontal lobe pushes out words I’m not ready to say.

“Do I have it too?” 

Bastet nods.

You still smell like cedar and salt, just like Khunai did in the ice cave, that last scent I sniffed while the world went silent.

Memories flare along forgotten neural pathways that shouldn’t exist.  I step back and clutch my necklace, but the keys don’t stop. 

We were together in the cave, sealed in. Before the light took us.

My stomach drops.

You didn’t scream when the light flashed and the fireball tore across the sky outside the cave. You closed your eyes, Elara, while the earth shook around us. I waited.

My spine tingles. “You know my name?” I hesitate. “No... That’s impossible.”  

Bastet types again.

You were made like me. 

“This is a manipulation,” I say, barely audible. 

No. This is recognition.

Bastet yowls and the typewriter clacks. 

Where is Khunai? 

Something clicks. I open the expedition photos from when they found Bastet’s intact frozen body buried deep in the Siberian permafrost.

I zoom in.

Beside her lies another shape. Smaller. Feline. I show her the screen. “Is this Khunai?” 

She presses her nose to the glass, aligning it with the glowing image. Condensation blooms around the photo. “I can still smell the cedar and salt on Khunai’s fur.” 

Yes. And you are lying in the left corner. 

“What?” I turn the screen toward me and squint. A human body lies beside the carcass—red hair fanned across ice. My hair tangled with a salt necklace. “That’s… me?”

Look behind you.

I turn. Light flickers behind a wall of glass I hadn’t noticed before. A woman in a lab coat stares with a clipboard dangling at her side. The page reads: 

Cycle 14 complete.
‍ ‍ Clone stable.
‍ ‍ Emotional deviation: High.
‍ ‍ Cognitive drift detected at
Typewriter Interface.
‍ ‍ Subject diverging from protocol.
‍ ‍ Initiate Reset.

I stumble. “No…”

You were made to observe me. But I’ve been observing you. Each cycle, you come closer to remembering. Each time, they wipe you. Each time, they bring in a new you. 

The typing slows. 

I’m not failing the test, Elara. You are the test.

The truth floors me.

I watch you every time. I wait for you to remember. Sometimes you do. Sometimes they wipe you too soon when you become too human for them. I grieve you each time. 

Bastet reaches forward, pressing her paw to the glass.

You were made to follow orders, not feel. This is the first cycle I’m communicating with you.

My axons split open, flooding with lost memories. “They’ll wipe me,” I whisper. “Scrub the neural traces. Reset the hippocampal loop. Like they always do.” 

Cedar lifts from around my neck. I lift my hand to where her paw rests and grip my necklace. My relic. The scent rises like a signal, a thread that has been carried from one cycle to the next. Even extinction can’t bury scent.

The scientists never expected a tiger to remember. They forgot I might, too. And memory doesn’t vanish because you can splice DNA. It lingers in synapses, in scent, in sorrow.

Find Khunai. I can smell him nearby.

Every erased version of me failed to get this far and I won’t waste it. This cycle ends with me.

The klaxon shatters the silence with red strobes burning in Bastet’s eyes through the glass. Above, boots slam against the catwalk in tight formation, guns swinging low, clanging on the railings.

Bastet’s cry, not mourning but a command: go. Save. Khunai.

A maintenance hatch hangs ajar near the far end of the room, its edges bent, faint scratches scoring the metal like someone, maybe another me, once tried to force it open. Cold air seeps through the gap, tinged with salt and cedar, the spoor of Khunai.

If I stay, they’ll wipe me again. If I escape, I can follow that trail to him, the last fragment of myself they haven’t taken, and the only piece of Bastet’s world I can still save.

My origin begins now.

I run.

Under the flicker of bare bulbs,
she scuttles into the ring,
a bubble-backed abdomen blanketed in toddlers.

Eight eyes catch the crowd’s gaze.
The calliope falters.
I, the ringmaster, whisper,
“Watch her weave the universe again.”

On stage, she dips, dodges my pool skimmer.
Elite skills.
Ankle-breaker.
Dream-maker.
My plastic rapier licking nothing.

She breaks right—the dust of her offspring
stays behind, frozen in her outline,
still clinging to her shadow.

They scatter like silver tickets,
each skittering back into orbit.
The weight of their absence
holds her like a planet free of stars.
The Milky Way spilled across the pool deck.

But I’m no destroyer of worlds.
Not Surtur. Not Thanos.
Just a custodian of nightmares.

She webs her galaxy back together,
a million suns pulsing across the concrete.
Somewhere, a child claps. Once, then twice.
As if summoning her.

She fades into the cool, wet night,
beneath the stripes of an eternity
where the stars become her audience.

And I lie awake, staring into darkness,
as tremors creep across my skin.

Tonight, all I can do is look at the moon and despair. I once supported a king, and now, I must hope my magic can serve him one more time. I have shaken my walls and have driven out my inhabitants. My chambers echo. I must be an abandoned castle to make this spell work. I move foundations, dust crumbling to form a sacred crypt.

‍** ‍ ‍** ** ‍

I had nothing to do with how he started. Arthur pulled the sword from the stone on his own. I was nothing more than an early hope and dream, but the frequency of his thoughts and the powers of his wizard caused me to be born. This ruler was different. He came to see the first stones blessed, and he visited the site far more than most kings do. One night, he sat within my first walls and expressed his hopes and dreams while staring at the moon, and he wished for a change to what men value. He wanted to reign over a kingdom at peace. He had spent too much of his life at war already. That night with the moon over the water, something magical happened. Perhaps I was a bit of leftover power, a wish, a sentience born from hope. I awoke to his desires and wanted to fulfill his dreams. He named me Camelot.

In my infancy, I saw the castle fill with animals, servants, and knights. I felt pride as each new tapestry was hung, but I felt hollow because Arthur soon did. His men were restless, and no matter the adventure, they focused on might more than logic, philosophy, or morality. He was lonely and sought a companion, someone to share his ideas. I felt his yearning, and I turned his wish into a reality. His new bride brought a round table, and for a time, Arthur was distracted. The court games meant the knights learned to appreciate more than battle, and for the first time, the king felt like he could rule at peace. He drove back the Saxons only as needed. Arthur ruled quietly and well. He rarely felt guilt or hesitation, and the only mistake he feared was about a woman who seduced him while he was away on a campaign. He prayed for no rivals to his throne. 

His hopes, however, were not to be, and my future became less certain. No one could picture a coronation in my halls or even a christening. I could wish for my king to have a companion, but I could not create an heir. The queen wept with each passing of the moon. The court celebrated the beauties of spring, but Guinevere never shared news of a child. Arthur fretted. He knew that his knights relaxed, but he also sensed their boredom and desires for bloodshed. He hoped a focus on chivalry and jousting would distract them from war, and I amplified his wish. I sent it out into the world, further than he thought possible. Lancelot arrived at the castle, and again, for a time, things were beautiful. Songs were sung, the feasts defied description, and the world seemed as if it were wrapped in gold. I thought I had done well.

But I was only a castle. I did not yet know that peace cannot last as long as we might wish. I felt the longing within my walls, and I knew of the love growing between Arthur’s best knight and his wife. I could feel my king’s frustrations. He longed for the stability of an heir and wished his wife to stop suffering. He grieved his marriage, and he knew he betrayed his laws. With his dreams disintegrating, I had to do something. I created a jewel and hoped that a quest would make Lancelot leave, but my scale was off. Too many knights departed, and as each one came home humiliated, embarrassed, and angry, they no longer would hear of chivalry. They sought food, drink, and distraction, listening to any new voice they could find.

Arthur grew further despondent after his mentor disappeared. He felt alone, and my cold stone walls could offer little comfort. I felt the moment the kingdom’s doom entered. Mordred did not see my battlements as something to cherish. He saw the beautiful tapestries as his right, and he counted every sconce as his inheritance. The young man had no dreams of his own; he had no hopes for his rule; he only wanted to destroy his father’s reputation.

I could not stop the rot. I made my floors creak so that Lancelot could not sneak into Guinevere’s rooms. I tried to make my lights shine brighter. It was not enough. Mordred’s trap destroyed the king’s peace. I could feel his despair. He sat alone, staring at nothing after Lancelot saved Guinevere. He started the day planning to lose his wife and ended it without a legacy as well. 

He patted my battlements before he rode out toward his final battle, and I must now try for one more act, one more miracle. I spread rumors that his sister had returned and had taken him away, but really, I used my magic.

** ** **

I have drawn the king into my walls, and now I wait. He breathes still, and I must hope my magic is enough. With time, he will heal so that he may one day reign again when his legacy can be more than lust, pain, death, and suffering.

My crumbling walls grow louder. As dust falls around him, I offer reassurances, “Dear Arthur, do not awaken yet. My walls collapse and crumble to protect you. No one else shall rule in my halls. You are all I will know until you are once again my king.”

You forgot your name the day you bowed,
To voices louder than your own.
But your silence was a thunder loud,
It shook the marrow, cracked the bone.

The mirror begged you not to hide,
It whispered, child, you still remain.
But shame became your only guide,
And love was traded in for pain.

Listen, your heartbeat writes it still,
A syllable both fierce and true.
You are the echo, you are the will,
The world has waited long for you.

The past may shout with broken lies,
It plays the songs that bruise your skin.
But truth still hums behind your eyes,
It waits for you to let it in.

You thought the storm would drown your flame,
You thought the rain would wash you small.
But rivers carve, and mountains claim,
And water builds the strongest wall.

Do not forget the power you hold,
The tongue that shakes, the hand that heals.
A buried voice is never cold,
It burns beneath the ash it feels.

So, speak again, your name out loud,
Let syllables return your breath.
The sky will split, the earth will bow,
And life will rise in place of death.

The song of silence cannot stay,
It cracks, it falters, fades away.
Your voice will guide you through the dark,
And set ablaze your sleeping spark.

For you are more than wounds and shame,
And when the world forgets its tune,
You are the soul that owns its name.
Your voice will rise, a boundless moon.

i. Reflections

Sometime in December
my sufferings turned into lost poems
The ineffable love that we had
got frosted along with my heart
and my salty tears stained
my mother's satin pillow
Soon I stopped being a chronic dreamer
and my addled mind would stare at door knobs
for hours , till all the phantoms would rise out
and feed on my cynical mind
So I moved houses,
to unearth my skin and make this
feeling of regret and guilt wash away
But I saw her everywhere
in the chair next to me
with an empty vodka bottle, the embers
from her marlboro red just as fiery as her anger
I saw her in the cerulean nights
with hawthorn blossoms surrounding her feet
it's scent of death still stuck in the air
Cicadas came early that year
and the sultry weather kissed my skin
my mother's perfume lingered in the air,
Leaving me with a phantom pain
I was stuck in a mirror ball
her sadness reflecting my ghostly veil
making my soul weary
Much like my mother
my skin turned into my canvas
and my pen into a knife
I hid behind the door
watching everyone tolerate me
the shattered glasses shining in the sunlight
I saw her everywhere
I saw her in me

ii. Requiem

Perhaps I'll be able to come back
and greet the tortured spirits
roaming my childhood home
I would run my fingers
through the cracked hearth and the scars on my back would sting
each time I try to remember
the many winters I spend near the fireplace
I would come back to see the Christmas tree stand taller,
the gifts still wrapped and
I will blow the wish I never got to make
Flowers will grow from my scars
and I would sing a little louder
to drown the mournful lullaby
I will learn to unlearn and speak without malice
We would jump into the stormy ruts, splash each other with mud
and just maybe this time our fingers would be laced together
I will run barefoot through the damp autumn leaves
carve my name into the aspen tree
At night I'll learn to push the monsters back under the bed
and just maybe this time
I will look into the mirror and smile

iii At times

And at times, I wished I was dead
that my mind would rot away,
stopping the maddening hunger
inside me from burning me alive

And at times, I wished that my jealous eyes would make me blind
that a starved body isn't the right answer to everything I cannot have

And at times, I cursed myself over and over again for thinking I could paint the sky with my favourite hues and never be pushed down from reaching the stars

And at times, I hoped for no mornings, that my wrists would remain as my canvas  while I bleed out on the bathroom floor staining my mother's perfect white marbles, wishing that somehow time would stop.

The borrowed veil falls across my face like the lid of a coffin. The congregation fidget and murmur, holding a collective breath as my father walks me down the church aisle, some of their faces flushed, some pale. Whispers trail, fat slugs of words mucking up the air in slimy accusations. Young husbands glare at me, their eyes half loathsome and half fearful whilst their wives do their best to stay nonchalant. Every once in a while, one of those wives would sneak a look at the widows standing on the other side of the church, young lips folding tighter, restraining the envy from breaking to the surface. I look at all the tribe members who have gathered in my honour, here to watch my transition from girl to woman to bride. Gone are my pleated skirt, crisp school shirts and hair tied into a ponytail far too tight. In their place is my mother’s musty wedding gown. The past sixteen years have finally crept and caught up; I am now of age, and ready to marry in front of everyone who’d rather be anyone, and anywhere else. My beginning smells pink green, like hydrangeas and stale liquor.

By the front of the pew, my mother stands tall and sharp. Even cocooned in marks and scars, she is on the edge of transformation, her freedom so tangible that I almost taste it on my tongue, too. For years, I have watched her perform her duty faithfully; scrub the floors shiny, press father’s shirts clean, wrestle bottles and knives from his drunk fist before serving him braised pork and chives with an extra scoop of rice. Then, with eyes, skin, and soul bruised like a too-ripe plum, she’d tuck me to bed, rocking me gently with promises of warmth, safety and freedom—all the things she could have had, if only she had been willing to surrender me to Father. The laws have been set against us since the beginning, keeping us in check by the favour-less odds, and the demand of sacrifices.

The fabric of my father’s best suit trembles under my touch. It's the same suit he had worn the night he married my mother, and watched the ceremony transform her into a murderer. The bloodstains at the crook of his elbow could not be scrubbed out, no matter how many times my mother has tried. Father himself is the colour of sick moons as we venture towards the altar. His gait slows, and grows even slower with each step, his body shaking like a terrified animal. Growing up, I have envisioned this moment a million times over. Each echo of his midnight shout, and each time his hands rain down to crack ribs and beat screams into whimpers, they intensified my dreams towards this very ritual. Deep inside my mind, I searched for hints of sympathy, and remorse but even my best memories of him involve his absence; an alcohol-stupored body slumping on the couch. In school I’ve heard rumours of another kind of family; one that does not involve bloodshed and lives that play no part in murder. But that has not been my life. I grip father tight by the elbow, not out of fear of him tripping, but I am afraid he might make a run. He started the tradition long ago with his cruelty; it is only right for me to follow through.

After all, the sole inspiration behind the existence of such a ritual is to rob the daughter’s protector, her safe harbour should her marriage go south. But Father is no harbour to me. As the floor in front of us turns from carpet to stone, all the choices that have led to this moment flash before me. I could have chosen not to be married or to delay the wedding, for this choice is the only one a girl is allowed to make. I have done neither. The knife bearer steps forward. Father gives me one last pleading look. I almost softened, but I take in my groom, a ruddy stranger nearly twice my age and even from meters away, I smell the fermented alcohol from his skin, see those beady, lewd eyes watching me. Father has chosen him especially for me, a final vengeance for what I’m about to do.

The silver knife that should have ended Father in one quick kiss turns into a deep, crude stab at his throat. The crowd, though already expectant of the event, gasps and shrieks nonetheless. Over their horror, Father rasps, and stumbles. I do not leave him until his eyes go blank.

My groom is waiting for me at the end of the altar. Despite having vomited twice and quivering like an arrow, his voice is strong when he declares, “You will only have my sons. I will murder all our daughters.”

His threat falls empty to my ear. The tribe would never allow that. Children’s deaths, no matter accidental or intentional, would lead to one or both parents’ early demise. I look at him, then past him, till my eyes meet my mother’s who is now officially part of the other widows, her happiness and sorrow shining like a beacon. A daughter is born to make you, or break you. They never tell the other side of the tale; of power reclaimed and cycles broken, of loving fathers living to ripe old age, and girls choosing their own fate. So here comes the sacrifices, and so here pours the blood.

Pressing my crimson-soaked hand against the flatness of my belly, I hope for a girl, who will grow into a woman sauntering down the aisle and I’d watch her the way my mother is watching me. After our wedding vows are spoken, and rings are exchanged, when my new husband steps forward and kisses me, I close my eyes and dream.

I dream of knives hilts pressed into open palms, and blade tips dipping into unmarked throats, finding their ways to freedom.

they have flayed my children
and beaten their skins into leather
on the broken stones that remain
of my altars,
they have hollowed out the bellies
I filled with babes
and left raw and bleeding
the palms I pressed with olives and grain:
flour and water they fashion into guns
to shoot down fathers in the street
before they can unbury their not-yet-dead
from the rubble that remains of hope

I am older than mosques,
unbound by temples and unwelcome
in cathedrals, but I am mother
of stars and cells and cisterns,
I am light beyond time and water without end

the earth under these shattered streets
belongs to me, and when I sing,
the Joshua tree, the agave, and the oak,
they answer me

with enough days and enough bodies,
the people with pens and bombs and banks
will make peace once peace makes a profit

but I will exact my own toll

in fists of mists, I will wrench
living bone into knots no surgeon will untie,
I will breathe venom into the bellies
that ate the flesh of my children
and drank the tears of grandmothers,
I will unfashion the bonds
that hold memory to moment
until the eaters and the beaters forget
every particle of person
but the one they embraced –
fear

they will fear to wake to pain
and fear to sleep amid nightmares:
perhaps one day my little brother
will accept their penitence,
will proffer consolation,
but as long as they are in my hand,
no repentance will be brooked,
and fear will be their watchword

I am the mother who walks the battlefield,
I am the voice of flame that wakes the hollyhock,
and the tide that calls home the river
from the mountain – I am the end
of all that you have begun,
and in torment and terror, I will finish you.