Wayétu Moore
If she were not born human she would have been a panther with steel paws and brick for flesh she would have licked over them black lips and whiskers when her gut overflowed when a catch beckoned or when she wanted to fuck. If she were not born human she would have been a hunter that shimmied about thickened masses of branches that dug their own roots and a priestess queen of an elegiac jungle where mocking birds fed her songs she swallowed and longed for nothing.
But Mrs. Dalloway was born human.
Grey with hunched shoulders
Mostly wrinkled and drowning
Searches the duchesses’garbage
For relics and recognitions
Of a past life
Haunted silhouettes
Dancing gowns
Mountainous regrets
Tragically unloved.