Melissa Llanes Brownlee RKTKN/Unsplash You wen collect da hair and fingernails he asks as his puffy white hair dances in the ocean breeze and you answer yeah, yeah I did, no worries but you worry don’t you no worries me if you never do it, you not going get what you want he scolds through broken teeth, his breath, rotting fish and seaweed, I stay know Tutu I wen get ’em you insist okay den put ’em on the table and you place upon the weathered picnic table in front of him the

by Melissa Llanes Brownlee Didssph My lover left me when our twins died. His tusks dragging across the blood red mud outside my home, furrows of anger and loss, marred by the passing of his stamping hooves. He knew I hated the boar shape of him, full of black bristles and roughened skin. Our twins had the fiery glow of my skin and hair, the darkness and cunning of his eyes. I had loved him from the first moment I saw him flowing from bird to boar to fish to man. His being as