vaccination
in times of need I meet a bruja who brews venom out of nightshade,
moth wings and nyquil — I say venom, not poison, because she delivers
the toxins with her teeth, like a snake. don’t ask me why. all I know is that the feeling
is numbness, a chill wind in the heart’s chambers, the smell of hair
burning — then sleep.
while I toss and turn, the bruja cleans my bite wound and binds it. the mind
fills with unspilled secrets. sweat beads on the upper lip, grotesque
admissions and beggings for forgiveness squirm, sleepspoken, from my restless
tongue, flopping around the room like a grey-fleshed fish
gasping for air. time passes, the toxins
do their purging work. just before I awake, I’m visited
by a vision: a hairless black xoloitzcuintli dog
judging me from the corner of the cold,
empty room. her eyes’ milky whiteness implies
blindness, but I feel her gaze like sandpaper scraping
the skin. I gasp — the image scatters.
sitting upright, I take inventory of
the room: two water bottles, a fistful of
earth, and the dust motes: golden
confetti riding the stale, stunned air.
Marc Huerta Osborn is a poet and educational consultant based in the East Bay, California. His poetry appears in The Acentos Review, Rust + Moth, and various Stanford University publications. For inspiration, he devours anime, hip-hop, and fiction.