A witch is a storyteller, 

ours and life and time’s. 

Flat on a page, 

tingling down your back as they swirl, 

blood-thick around your brain, 

metallic taste - 

Target practice for words - 

a word for you, the word for me when life gets bad. 

 

A witch is a selfish one - 

the you and me together. 

If only you could see yourself for everything you are- 

When a witch sets it all down, 

it doesn’t seem real. 

The weakness. 

The reverberations. 

It’s not of this world. 

It’s not okay to wish. 

It’s not okay to regret. 

It’s not okay to find yourself in the other world. 

Because then you’re stuck, 

trying and trying and trying. 

To match your lies with my truth. 

 

A witch is like Persephone, 

a light and dark. 

Feeling just short of everything. 

Manic and suicidal, 

wrathful and nothing. 

A witch does not fear either side, 

or any point in the bloodied blissful blueprints of me. 

 

A witch is a writer. 

A witch is an artist, 

A witch is themselves. 

And you can - 

and I am - 

A witch is everything I am and you are and more. 

 

A witch is no imposter 

Because a witch builds themself over again after your Tower crumbled beneath you - 

You felt less strong, less creative, not a writer, not an artist, nothing 

You were true imposter - not myself, but in existence. I suppose I fear that person - you. 

 

A witch does not make decisions as a matter of course, the riptide cannot pull them. 

 

You would have married him. 

But I chose something else. 

I chose myself. 

In the guise of her. 

I found myself in her. 

In a way, that’s partly very true. 

 

A witch wouldn’t have been able to find myself without her. 

We existed for each other as a foil to our trajectory of course, 

the one set out to us by society, 

our family. 

You found yourself in her. 

She helped you find parts of yourself, 

and then when everything happened, 

Then your Tower crumbled, earth shifting, 

Riptide heaving, wrenching me under, no breath, salt and silt and sand and flailing trendrilled hair unbound, pulling me deep, grit in the teeth, lungs give way to lakes, down and down again, through reefs bright like neon in tubes, turning grim, pale, a new shade of grey 

Corporeal to corpse, carnivorous and cruel, 

where time does not exist, 

that’s where I went, 

after. 

 

A witch is many things, and you are not one of them - 

Bedrock under leather and shoulders, furthering adrift in a sea of unknowns, unknowables and split ends. 

A witch is everything you were, I am and more - 

 

A witch has the World and the Strength. 

A witch possesses myself and knows yourself, 

High Priestess, Hierophant and Hermit, 

at once alone and with my words 

 

Curiosity, foundation, solitude 

A witch’s life is mine to take, 

Conjures my own reality, carves out my own life. 

The one that’s all mine. 

I’m here, hoping the air will hold me, paddling towards unknowns as ceaselessly as breath and death. 

Seeking meaning, 

And the giants 

And home 

 

A witch will never go back. 

A witch trusts myself. 

A witch knows that I look back on the you that I didn’t trust then: 

I know you got me here.

A witch is a myriadical patchwork of art and anatomy she constructs of everything I know, everything I feel and think and see and read and love and hate and do and am. 

I trust every part of me, 

those parts that have been lost and selfish, but I will never, ever go back. 

Perhaps I will continue through my changes and relearn, recast, release 

each year, 

my focus short, 

my life ahead. 

My past will be here always - 

I will always have a part of you with me, 

but I know now that I am good, that 

I am mine and life and time.

​

©2025 Annika Nori Ahlgrim