THE HAUNTING

By Farah Lawal Harris, 2024

That feeling of foreigners invading my temple

hunts me.

I am hunted by emptiness behind the detectives’ eyes.

I am hunted by the ugly yellow linoleum floors

of Howard University Hospital.

I am hunted by hairs being plucked,

by feeling like I lost myself in the muck

with stones and grit in my left eye.

I am hunted by body-shaking cries.

My trauma so deep it grew fibroids.

Hunted I was all the time.

The hunting now stops by each April.

I cry with the showers,

then emerge in May as a flower.

If not for the hunting,

I wouldn’t know bliss.

After the hunting,

I became a tulip.