Four Poems of Nikita Gill

Every day, I magic myself alive again
 [ ... ]

efore she became fire, she was water.
Quenching the thirst of every dying creature.
She gave and she gave
until she turned from sea to desert.
But instead of dying of the heat,
the sadness, the heartache,
she took all of her pain
and from her own ashes became fire.

One day when you wake up, you will find that you have become a forest. 
You have grown roots and found strength in them that no one thought you had. 
You have become stronger and more beautiful, full of life giving qualities. 
You have learned to take all the negativity around you 
and turn it into oxygen for easy breathing. 
A host of wild creatures live inside you and you call them stories. 
A variety of beautiful birds rest inside your mind and you call them memories. 
You have become an incredible self sustaining thing of epic proportions. 
And you should be so proud of yourself, 
of how far you have come from the seeds of who you used to be.

This is our riot act,
our manifesto,
our revolution:
because the ones
who did this know
we are talking about
their monstrous actions.
It’s time for them
to have the nightmares,
for them to suffer
for what happened,
for them to fear being
named by the same
voices they silenced.
I hope they are
forever haunted
by these two words:
“Me too”