They say the devil slept in your daughter’s womb
their children’s bones – leftovers on your plate
I say keep on escaping meaning
setting words loose like your three horsemen
They say you are a danger to be feared
your secret house deep in the woods – a trap
I say your name doesn’t pin you down
you’ve been reduced and misunderstood
They say they’d like to watch you burn alive
make you a symbol they can recognise
I say their myths allow them to survive
make sense of chaos, avoid self-understanding
You know the gap between what you desire
and what you get, sharp light shines through it
Stay ambiguous, keep shifting, keep moving
better to be the other than do the othering
Baba Yaga
Agata Maslowska
Agata Maslowska was born in Poland and lives in Scotland. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Edinburgh Review, New Writing Scotland, -algia, Amberflora, Blackbox Manifold, Gutter Magazine, among others, and been anthologized in A Thousand Cranes: Scottish Writers for Japan (Cargo) and Glasgow (Dostoyevsky Wannabe). She is the recipient of the Hawthornden Writing Fellowship and the Gillian Purvis Award for New Writing. You can find her at @AgataMaslowska on Twitter.