I.
How would you feel if I ground up your bones for medicine?
If I wore your knuckles around my neck
as a charm against evil?
Has that even occurred to you,
that the tables could be turned?
That I’ve granted you more forgiveness
than you’ve ever considered giving me?
Gods, have you thought at all?
Have the tables turned at all?

II.
Maybe I only feel this way now that you’re hunting me.
Would the disgust that I feel for you be so vivid if it were
just a rabbit, just a lion, just a woman that I don’t know?
Would my hate burn so hot
if I hadn’t watched you gleefully stuff and rack
your weapon? My indignation
is forgivable in the context
of your friends on the Senate floor.
We travel in herds now,
safety in numbers.

III.
The women may be prey animals,
but the men aren’t predators—
the men are just men.

IV.
I’m protecting something. Something precious.
Something no one can own. Something wild.
I don’t remember what it felt like to have something
worth protecting. You won’t even respect our corpses,
will you? My wrath will drown you.
I have been bleeding for years
before you ever got to taste me and it won’t be my blood,
if you come for me, that will wash you away.
I dare you to ignore the effigies I’ll stake into my yard
and hang over my bedroom door, knuckles and bones
I bleached in the sun, harvested from broken bodies
discarded by the likes
of you.

V.
Put the fucking gun down. Torrent.
Downpour. I’m not yours to kill.
I won’t be more fodder for men.
I refuse to allow my body
to satisfy you.
This is war.

A. Riel Regan (they/any/fluid) is a queer, disabled author of poetry and fiction with an intense appreciation for “the human heart in conflict” (Faulkner). Their writing often deals with themes of conflict within the self, chronic illness, and knowing oneself through nature. Their poetry has been featured in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the Kentucky State Poetry Society’s Pegasus, HOOT Review, Emerge Literary Journal, The Forgotten Writer, new words {press}, and Impossible Task. When not writing or reading, they find themselves killing half their houseplants and boldly defending the other half from their cats.