**Hashani Hunger**

Nobody warned me

that grief has teeth.

That it would pace the halls of Hashan
like a starving beast,

singing through broken boughs,

asking for four seeds,

just four,

to plant inside a heart

grown barren.

I gave it my pride.

My sleep.

My precious memories.

Still it hungered.

The Bough Butcher laughed.

The unnamed watched.

A black kitty cat crossed my path,

awake when I wished not to be,

and for a moment

I thought myself cured.

But hunger is clever.

It learns your name.

And once it knows you,

it sings.


Penned by my hand on the 22nd of Miraman, in the year 1007 AF.