Hot Pot Magazine

By Zary Fekete

You were so small when you were born. Barely a trickle. You tried your first steps through thick
tree trunks with their roots drinking from your underground siblings. You ambled this way and
nuzzled against flowers. Then you swirled through the forest floor and finally out onto the vast
plain.

It wasn’t long before you heard the prayers given to you. You began to carry the hopes of
villages on your back. You plied fisherman with your depths where creatures swam and
swarmed.

You gave yourself freely. You showed no partiality. You were called a goddess because you
birthed other children who strongly fought their way across the valleys and lowlands.

You saw seasons and calendars come and go. You invited springtime thaws into your belly and
you overflowed your banks but not as a monster. You settled through summers when lovers
played in your arms in their small vessels. You endured winters. You sometimes froze and
children learned to play games across your still fingers.

You understood pain. How did it feel when you were made to eat the dead? Did it violate you
when the martyrs were thrown into your jaws after they were shot? Or did you reach out your
arms to catch them and carry them away to a larger kingdom where they would never again feel
the mark of persecution?

Goddess, you never complained. Not even each day when you empty yourself at the end of your
path into one which is vaster and deeper than you. Perhaps you know more than we know.
Perhaps though you have only one trough to follow you know of deeper mystical parts of the
earth where lives begin again and where even a goddess can become a child once more.

You are so small when you are born.

Zary Fekete…

…has worked as a teacher in Hungary, Moldova, Romania, China, and Cambodia.

…lives and works as a writer in Minnesota.

…has been featured in variations publications including Zoetic Press, Bag of Bones Press, and Mangoprism.

…has a debut chapbook of short stories coming in March 2023 from Alien Buddha Press.

…enjoys books, podcasts, and long, slow films. Twitter: @ZaryFekete