on the art of conjugation

When I ran out of animals, I burned my insides on the altar, offering. The gods I used to worship may have died, but my coaxing always

rises, an arpeggio of palilalia, last diminished note of a chord in D minor. Someone has to keep the fires hot. I stoke the coals of girlhood,

laying out the bits of me I only knew existed when they were not mine any longer. Here is the first time I discovered I was hollow,

pinned like Medusa, my head naked, snakeless. In embers, the duvet cover smokes out its pomegranates, the blood and the vomit. That

is what I shed unwillingly every month, full moon rolling out the tide from my thighs. There is the yolk sac of the child I never grew.

My ancestors tell me they were not marched to their deaths in the Syrian desert for this tangled nonsense; from rape, to abortion, to

My ancestors tell me they were not marched to their deaths in the Syrian desert for this tangled nonsense; from rape, to abortion, to fucking the manager.

fucking the manager. This is a page from my rosewater diaries, charting the decomposition of all the plants I ever kept, cactus to

Dieffenbachia. History is to watch things rot. What remains of my father, worm-bitten in a mushy casket, is so small I could cradle him

in my palm. I do. He lies on the altar with all the other things I want back. We go to the grave twice, they say, once when you are buried,

next when your name evaporates with the morning dew. My mother cried as I dug out weeds from under his tombstone, flicking away

the maggots with a spade. I am neither seed nor mulch. Some of my roots are rotting with dead leaves in a crescendo of irreverence: half a

gallery conformed to shame, and lies, and forgotten innocence. Voilà, I say, bowing to the ghosts. The past tense loves smoke. It feasts on the

meal of my self-made mythologies. You can’t, I shouldn’t have, I’m sorry, it hurts, I wish writhe together on the altar. I barbecue it all, composing a

liturgy as I flip a jar filled with childhood bruises and varicose veins. The ghosts applaud wildly, salivating. Sing to me, O Muse, of the rage in stolen

pieces. When it all burns, I will carry the ashes to the compost bin and dump them where dead things belong. Tell me, ghosts. How’s that for letting go?

By Nuard Tadevosyan