The world ends today.

Warriors, enemies
on horses stampede
with drawn swords
torches and malice
from the hills above the village.
In a blinding moment
they are on us, a furious storm
of bloodlust with wild eyes.
Our home's aflame
children fall beneath hooves
from distant towns with strange names,
foreign kings we never--

Today the world ends.
I chop off the head of the snake.
Its reptile eyes refuse to darken
its jaws stretch open, gaping
in defiance, the long muscle of body
stretches to rejoin the head
urging toward resurrection.

The world ends
in the place where my father vanished
where my mother baptized me
where I carry the head
of the snake in one fist
and the body in the other.

I wave the world into existence
with a gesture, a prying open, 
a stretching of something spinal,
a willing for what is emergent.
​