A talk with a vamp! (A monosyllabic prose poem)

By  Jing Villamil

 

HERE I am, back to this place I left, this swath of land that thought it had lost me. It has not! My clan had sprung from here, too. One does not let go of home, though it was just once a home, though one homes in more!

This place had not changed much. Time must have slowed. Or been stumped, stomped by clenched fists raised in threat, and wars that must be fought. I see that fields were tilled, filled with greens. And that new roots had sprung from the old. Trees had leafed thickly, branched high and wide to try and reach the skies, where gods keep watch! And ‘neath the shades, the young hide and seek for their selves. But the sun sees! And warmed, warned them just the same. The sky smiled, and swirled its blues with twirls of white.

Soon, she saw me! She who gave life and cared for these lives. She still has such sharp sense of sight. Then and now, she is shield to her young. She looked me in the eye. And raised a hand for a sharp slap!

I go round her fast. And steal a kiss, a bite on her nape. If this is not Iove, what is? I am gone in a flash, sweet blood on my lips. Her taste, a surge in my veins!

I am strong now. She fills me! I feel her in me! I hear her thoughts. What is this that now haunts and hounds her days and nights? She thinks: “there is no safe place for us and our young!” She shrieks: “no safe place from him who steals from us all hours.” She sighs: “and no safe place from him who steals a kiss, a bite at morn, at dusk!” She pleads: “Oh, help us God! Why yet have You not?”

I look here and there. Who is he – whom she fears more than me?

I creep, I rise, I fly, I flit, I float. And I come to know him whom she fears more! Not like me, it is half-a-life! But when he gets in her, his clan gets in there, too! And if she was weak with not a fight left – she is theirs, her breath, her all.

I am a whole life. I am with my clan but I roam free. I suck her blood (just a drop!) for food that I may live; but the ill she gets from me can be sucked out! Just change her blood or a part of its make. And she shall live! This she learned from those who heal; thus she must have known me long.

She had not known him long. How can she fight one not known; much worse, not seen? She might as well shoot a ghost! And kill a wall!

I could not tell her these. I can not. I suck, not talk. Tell her: “Know well he whom you face; and the fight is half-won.”

I am Aedis Aegypti. And he is acronym from last year.

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