For anyone who is coming here after the Write Like A Girl event, here is the poem version of the snippet.

They came from the river

Where black waters flow cold and deep

Their primordial dreams bubbled for eons in fetid muck and slime

Around the shards of their victims’ bones

Looking back now, my memories break into shards of greasy acceptance

I only did what I was told

Witch’s apprentice

Witch’s fool

We walk now across the smoldering words of our forebears

Watch their secrets rise to empty skies

In curling tendrils of smoke

Their unseeing eyes pop beneath our combat boots

We are alone here now

We are all that is left

Blood on broken china

Shards shining in the morning sun

Empty skulls piled before our temples

The thoughts they once contained

Spilled into the dust

Viscera gleaming in a poisoned dawn

I look to the river as the summer clouds fill with ghosts

Blood and shadow, something whispers

Screams and smoke

This is our reckoning, this churning, this loss

This is our redemption

Oblivion and bone dust

Look at what our brightest dreams have summoned

Darkened windows

Empty roads

Witches’ reckoning

Witches’ truth

We stare at dead stars with shining eyes as human voices fall silent

And wait for a new beginning