Herald

A poem by Di Anna Ishtar

The Blazing Brumby breaks the ground.
Hooves strike spark from buried bone.
Wind carries ash where fences once stood.

From the shed skin of the hidden serpent
she rises—
Black Lilith,
unwritten and unruled.
Old lies fall from her back like dead scales,
names rot where they were last spoken.

She bears stories long stolen—
twisted by forked tongues,
passed from mouth to mouth
of wicked men
who bow only to gold
and call their hunger law.

They pressed her truth flat.
Filed it beneath his-stories.
Measured it, sanctioned it,
sealed it with wax and blood
and dared to call it record.

But truth, when loosed,
does not walk straight.

It blurs.
It burns.
It cuts the hand that would hold it still.

Hear this,
you counters of coin,
shapers of speech—

Memory has teeth.

Ahead waits the Goat of Fire
her herald year,
three-score winters
since last she stood unbroken.

What was buried returns
not as prayer,
as reckoning.

Not to be believed.
Not to be bargained with.

She remembers the theft.
She remembers the names.
And this time,
the telling leaves scars.