In another world, I’m sure I laced my tea with fenugreek.

Yes, I dressed my front door with garlands of straw and pine

and lay in state for five days, while a young woman

from the village rubbed salt into my swollen feet.

In another world, I know I rested for the full thirty days.

I avoided hot baths. Or I avoided cold baths. My hair lay

tangled on the pillow like a serpent’s shed skin. I saw it.

In another world, I shied away from men, shielded them

from my unholy body, the uncertainty slipping

like scarlet silverfish down my thighs. My sheets were

buried quickly under the floorboards. In another world,

the colostrum dried out in my breasts. Or I nursed freely,

day and night, day and night, never offending any ghosts.

In another world, I packed my bags and returned

to my mother’s house, to be fed, washed, taught what

a mother was, at last, to be grateful. In another world,

I must have been surrounded for a hundred nights by wild,

wise, luminous women who stroked my cheeks and wept

for the beautiful things I had lost. In another world,

I may have slept for forty days while those exact women

mixed elixirs from angelica root, honey, cracked seaweed,

their heavy plaits thudding like boots on their backs.

The questions drying out in my mouth. What is. Why did. Would it have.

In another world, other hands may have soothed my baby

while I watched from under a thick blanket. Maybe I ate

nothing but hot foods to counteract my feminine nature,

so spongy and unfinished. In another world, they may have

hoisted me above an open fire and left me to sweat it out.

To cure. To counteract. We have no way of knowing.