Poem: Dream Journal, August 27, 2024.

I stood, bare feet on dusty soil, a scene from antiquity

laid out before me. I gazed down at silvered skin, then back out

at my two sisters' fighting forms; altogether we were three.

One goddess had transgressed—was her we together sought to rout,

dealing strikes with matching crescent daggers, time-worn and rusty.

We triplets traded blows, our bangles glinting in the low sun,

khopeshes flashing, biting, sapping one another's vital

essence. I screamed in incandescent fury; the wicked one

stood stock-still, eyes magnesium-bright from my fratricidal

cry. At once I slashed her shoulder; her dark blood began to run.

Three demiurges, a psyche at war. The vanquished one lay,

beaten; my sister grabbed her twisted locks, roughly hacking them

off with her oxidized sickle in a conqueror's display.

The braids fell like harrowed flowers, separated root from stem.

Meanwhile I, with dagger raised, prepared to cut her throat, to slay.

September 2024 Erin Rehil

Photo courtesy of the artist. Taken 2015, Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum, Chinatown, Singapore.