by Nikita Gill
When Mother Nature felt in her bones that her child had returned, she took her into her arms and turned all the leaves to green again. But because the leaves of amber gold were how her girl found her again, it happens every single year in commemoration. We call it a season. We named it after Mother Nature’s only daughter. We called it Autumn.
Why It Rains
Girls with coverings that range from twilight to midnight have always felt hunted somehow in a world that says the night is full of terrors simply because of the colour of the sky, and she was no different. She learned this by watching her mother and grandmother deal with people every day. Somewhere between words like ‘This isn’t your country’ and ‘I don’t see race’, she saw them make their own place. She learned that women who are ember-skinned are made with so much strength inside them that even when the whole Earth tries to beat them into the ground, bury them in dirt made from their own bones, they still keep standing.
On the day they left their country to come to this land, it began to rain. When they reached here, it rained too. She began to notice that every time she saw a brown girl hurt, or sad, it would rain and it would rain and it would pour. Almost as though the sky saw every injustice poured upon their bodies and cried because it couldn’t help them.
She visited a witch once. A long time ago, when she came to this land. She asked her about the rain. And the witch told her that this started thousands of years ago. The sky crying for brown girls. The sky feeling the pain of brown girls within itself, heavy, laden with grey clouds thick with tragedies no human should have to bear.
It’s how we know the universe sees us. And it’s how we know what happened to us is so wrong, that even the universe can see our pain. This is why it made us so strong, it gave us thunder in our veins.
The Moon Dragon
It’s an age-old story. There is a princess, stuck in a tower, guarded by a dragon who the prince must defeat so he can rescue said princess and they can live happily ever after. You’ve heard it growing up, right? Except it’s wrong. So here’s the real tale and you can judge it for yourself.
You see, once upon a time there was a princess, and when she was little, a wise witch came to her in her playroom on a sunny afternoon and said:
‘Little princess,
you have a choice,
you can choose silence
or you can choose a voice.
If you choose silence
then a daughter, wife, mother
is all you will ever be
but if you choose the other
then magic I will give to thee.’
The little girl thought for a bit, and honestly, the answer came
to her pretty quick,
‘Wise old woman,
with your big heart,
the first sounds like
a lifetime of coming apart.
So the second I will choose
as I like my own voice,
and a gift of magic
will make me rejoice.’
So the witch tapped the little princess with her wand and said ‘Wait for night-time and you will be reborn.’ The little girl nodded, she was not afraid. So when night came, from her bed she rose, she walked to the window to see the moon. Suddenly, she found her arms and her body turning to scale and when she looked to her mirror, much to her delight she saw a dragon instead of a girl this night.
From then on, when she was touched by moonlight, the little princess became a moon dragon with rich blue and purple scales and wings that expanded for days. When morning came, she became a human again and chuckled with secret joy at her tutor whilst she was taught how to be the perfect wife.
But all good things come with addendums, and the king and queen grew to learn of the princess’s nightly rides. In despair, thinking it a curse, they built a castle with the highest walls, a tower and a moat and left her there. The princess is happy, she has a library of books, good friends in the people her parents left with her and sometimes the witch visits and they laugh at their little secret. News, however, spreads that it’s a curse, and secrets transform as they are passed from ear to ear, so when the news reaches a neighbouring kingdom, people think that a moon dragon who emerges at night is preventing a princess from experiencing freedom.
And so a prince decides that it is his duty to help this lost little princess, he will slay the dragon and find a grateful, beautiful princess to make his own bride. So off he rides into the darkness, and upon approaching the castle in the distance draws his sword. By the time he gets to the castle and, with difficulty, crosses the moat and clambers over the wall to the courtyard, night is almost over and from the tower he watches as the dragon returns. It is a thing of beauty, this scaled, wonderful, flying creature, but to the prince, it is a beast he must slay to get a prize.
As he lifts his sword and shouts to the creature, the first rays of the sunlight emerge and glisten over its wings, and suddenly, there before him is a princess instead, who sees his sword and starts laughing. ‘What are you here to do exactly?’ she asks him, still chuckling at his shock.
The sword clatters to the ground as the prince looks lost. ‘Well, you see, they told me about a dragon and a princess and I thought I could …’ he trails off weakly.
‘You thought I must be in need of saving? Because you are in need of a wife? How archaic and condescending.’
The prince clears his throat and then says, ‘Fair princess, I will do whatever I can to break the curse that turns you into … that thing.’
‘That thing, as you call it,’ the princess says, ‘is the magical part of me. I love being the dragon and the dragon loves me.’
The princess raises an eyebrow. ‘I will love me this way. And I never said I was in want of being someone’s wife.’
‘But if not a wife, you will die an old maid,’ he presses on.
‘I am half dragon, who told you I will ever die at all?’
The prince frowns in annoyance, he is obviously vexed and he speaks words that anyone over the course of history will tell you he will regret. ‘I think you need to learn that if you aren’t a wife and a mother, you are a witch and have no place in this world.’
The princess stares at him for a moment and then she snaps her fingers. Guards appear and take the prince by his arms, escort him out, and yet the princess lingers. She looks him in the eye before he is thrown out, the moon dragon’s gleam still in hers, and she speaks words so powerful the wind etches them inside the atmosphere for women to remember through history. ‘I exist. Outside of being a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, I exist. I exist as a human first, as a being that experiences joy and suffering, beauty and learning, life and tragedy. I exist because the universe chose to put me here for a purpose higher than my relation to men. I exist because a wise old woman gave me a gift and now magic runs through my veins. So the problem is not my existence as half dragon, half girl. The problem is how you perceive it as so small, you do not believe I can exist at all apart from through my bonds with men.’
And after the prince is thrown out, the moon dragon and the princess continue to share the day and night and live happily ever after.
The Tale Weaver
When I was a little girl, I had a friend and sometimes I wondered if he was born on the day the Titanic sank. Other days, he has been here longer than the pyramids themselves. He told me stories about a world I still can’t even imagine. A world where a simple smile could set into motion events that could destroy countries. An almost-earth where the stars talk and the moon listens. A realm where one can find adventures, like dragons who save knights and weather that moves on a person’s command instead of the other way around.
I always listened in awe and wonder at how such things could be when murder, unhappiness, and sacrifice plague my world.
His stories were always hauntingly beautiful. Sometimes he would tell me about all the princesses he once tried to save. They always end so horribly. They got taken away to their castles to live with pompo
us men who claimed they were really saving them, when the truth was, it was him, but still, he failed, he always lost them in the end.
His voice was so unfathomably soft it sounded unearthly. But his words had so much meaning, so much truth in them, that the depths of his voice could only come from wisdom. It is still the only voice that has ever truly made me smile since I was a little girl.
He told me about people who hate him, who wish he was gone from this earth, and that made me terribly sad.
How can anyone ever have thought that a voice that tells such stories was anything but kind?
His eyes were so old, his soul showed through them. It was frayed, and fragile like silk accidentally amongst moths. Still beautiful, still soft. And sometimes it had patches of darkness across it. Patches that … if I asked him about, he pretended he didn’t hear me. But he did.
I know because his eyes went dark with something I could not understand.
I know because it was when he disappeared.
I know because those were the only times I remembered that he was not just my friend. He was the monster that hid under my bed.
The Modern-day Fairytale
These days,
falling in love
is letting your soft,
innocent heart
get into a car
with a dangerous stranger
and just praying
nothing dreadful
happens to it.
Ode to the Catcaller Down the Street
I see the way you are looking at me,
gaze slick with lust I didn’t ask for.
You are hoping I am gossamer
and powder soft, passive smiles for you.
Perhaps you were told that all girls
are made of sugar and spice and all things nice.
Which is why you opened your mouth,
said that filthy thing, thinking what could she possibly do?
What a mistake you have made, my mother
didn’t raise a girl to be a passive fool for a man like you.
She raised a daughter with a howl trapped in her chest,
knives for a tongue, the Goddess Hera in her lungs.
Come any closer and I will savage you, I am a woman,
and I am made of lead and war and everything sour.
I have no regrets for using my words
like they are ammo to keep men like you at bay.
And if anyone asks me why I did it, I will tell them,
‘He was asking for it, did you not see what he was wearing,
he wanted it that way.’
The Girl Goes After the Wicked King Who Trapped Her in the Tower
Petition a thousand sorcerers to help you,
rally all of your allies to protect your throne.
Bring every priest to bless your lineage and its blood,
nothing will stop you from becoming ash and bone.
It is not your plundered treasure I have come for,
it is not your embezzled crown that I need.
You can weep for mercy, never granted, the way I did
when you entombed me in my own wretched screams.
You did not know that Athena is my patron saint, Hera is
my deity.
You do not know what a determined thing does to survive.
We grow fangs instead of teeth, claws for nails,
take apart tower prisons brick by brick with bare hands to
stay alive.
So here I am, o wicked king, look what you turned me into.
The nightmare, the fiend, the very thing that is needed to
destroy you.
Pandora’s Mind
Seeking the secret potion to happiness
inside the rooms of my mind may as well be
walking through all the chambers of Pandora’s box.
In there, religion nodded knowingly,
‘Confess every sin, all of them,
lay your heart before God, you will feel lighter.’
I tried it but I also kept sinning,
so the light never came—
—as my common sense pressed her fingertips together,
‘Keep a journal and put all of your feelings
inside it,’ and I made an effort, I really did,
but my feelings are so many that even
a hundred journals later I am not empty—
—as social expectation interjected,
‘What you need is a husband with strong hands
and he can take out all the sadness shelves
that are lined up inside your head.’ But it doesn’t know
that these shelves just build themselves back up—
—as my depression politely informed me,
‘No one is really going to love you,
you are too difficult to love anyway.’
And I tried and tried to make myself more loveable,
But in the process I just lost myself—
—as my anxiety screamed in annoyance,
‘Worry about other things like the moon moving farther
from the earth every year or your mother’s heart or—’
And all I know now is how to worry about
dead stars and money at the same time—
—as social conditioning tried to educate me,
‘Perhaps things like dreaming to be a writer
when you could do something sensible is the problem.’
And I tried my best to silence myself,
but my voice was too strong—
—yet a little voice inside me called Hope said softly,
‘Millions of good people die unhappy every year,
not a single one of them is coming back
to give the world a chance to change
and deserve them.’
And it reminded, ‘Maybe living your truth
may not make you happy all the time,
but it will make you happy every day.’
And it believed, ‘Perhaps stand for
what you believe in, even if you are
the only one in the whole room.’
And it whispered, ‘Perhaps the secret
to your own happiness lies inside
the owning of who you are, even broken.’
So I mixed the roots of hope
together inside an inkwell, filled a pen,
and finally wrote my truth.
The Trolls
(After Shane Koyczan)
PROLOGUE:
We have talked about them
before but it appears their numbers
have doubled, have tripled
have quadrupled since.
So here it is, an origin story
about the monsters amongst us
with no princess or prince.
THE STORY:
Banished beneath bridges,
there were once brewing beasts
we gave a different name.
We called them trolls.
Short for Transformations
failed to humans
with hearts and souls.
In desperation to save themselves
from the dreadful damp below bridges,
a rumour broke loose, nailing the coffin
into their last collective shred of decency,
that devouring a human’s heart
would give them what they need,
so they began to prey on humanity.
But the more they tried to hurt us
the more we fought back
until one day we finally
managed to beat them back,
until the stories became legend
and the legends became myths,
yet this is where the story really begins.
You see, the trolls were never dead.
They were simply asleep,
biding their time,
waiting for us to forget them,
to leave them as fairy stories.
When the first child turned
on
his first computer, a tremor was felt.
And that was when they rose
from their man-made prison hell,
they wore new avatars
and had learned to embrace
their lack of empathy and morality,
instead of hearts they now devoured
hopes, dreams, and an entire human just being.
They seek out the depressed
and find the lonely,
they make targets out of children
and sow divisive seeds
amongst friends and families.
All through the words on a screen
they make weapons; sticks and stones,
shovels to bury dreams.
They break open souls,
