By: Rakev Gemechu

Glory to Him

We sit in a circle, arms folded tight,
feet beating the earth like it owes us something.
The sun isn’t gentle; it burns our soles darker,
carves white lines across skin like old scars.
My feet, still smooth, hide under my dress,
streaked with morning mud, tucked away like secrets.
Others don’t hide theirs. Toenails gone, flesh raw,
they joke about what’s left, say thanks, they still walk.
“Glory to him,” they say.
Mother lost two from the same foot.
She once said it’d look better if they came from both.
As if symmetry could clean up blood,
as if pain split evenly was somehow less.
Where her nails should be, red blooms.
When I saw it, I screamed.
Not from shock, but because I knew:
blood that shade doesn’t belong to the living.
I asked her.
“Fungus,” she said,
and wouldn’t meet my eyes.
She looked at my father.
He sat across from us.
Feet hidden under his white turban,
too still.
Too clean.
Like mine.

Ode to the Knees That Do Not Touch

What once he called a song, bright with breath,
Now croaks from lips gone slack with years.
She smiles — cheeks taut, rehearsed — and laughs,
But the sound jars, no longer dulcet.
A howl or a wail — he cannot tell,
And still he laughs, though nothing’s funny.

The bed is cold beneath their backs,
While pillows hold a phantom heat.
They lie with practiced posture, posed,
Chins high, elbows tucked, eyes fixed on dark.
The silence swells, not loud, but thick.
It has been thirty years.

In the next room, the dress still hangs,
Once radiant white, now ruddy brown.
It does not weep. It does not age.
It gloats in stillness, smug in memory.
She no longer looks at it.
He forgot it long ago.

Their knees do not touch.
The space between them aches.
It holds the weight of what was lost.
They grow cold.
Teeth do not chatter.
They do not speak.
And still —
Their knees do not touch.

She Dances, I Walk

Footsteps thud behind me
The bundle on my back clings with a damp insistence
At least I am moving

I pause beside a pond
Cup water in red-streaked palms
A beetle stirs beneath the surface
A toad blinks once before slipping away

I lift the water to my lips
It falls
Refuses me
Returns to the earth that drinks without question

My throat stays dry
So I walk

Past huts with slanted roofs
Past lizards sunning themselves on split stone
Past trees with bark like old skin and roots like fingers

The bundle shifts
It used to scream, stomp, twist
Asked questions it could never speak aloud
I had answered anyway
Pointed forward
A short red finger thick with dirt and resignation

I looked ahead so no one would look too closely
Still I walked

Back hunched
Chin grazing the crusted mud
The bundle grows
I do not check

Only anger stirs

I stop
There is a woman in the clearing
Hair wild as brushfire
Arms lifted, hips swaying
Her eyes are closed
Her lips are tilted toward something I cannot name

I think, God save her
She moves as if she does not carry
She moves as if she never did

The bundle tightens its grip
Pinches deep
I walk again.

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Rakev Gemechu is an emerging writer based in Ethiopia whose works explore themes of womanhood, relationships, and religion. She serves as the editor of Polyphony Literature and her school’s newsletter.