Magdalena

She counts the wind that blew her west over an ocean as her first breath; the brightest of whatever constellation stood sentry overhead, her natal star. She can’t spell her birthplace, a town half a day’s walk from the once-capital of a land forever changing boundaries by the logic of politics and war. She can’t tell the hour of her birth, but only the moment of her mother’s death: it smelled like all of her own people dying, which is the stench of fear. Orphan with only her lungs to beg free air in a new place, she asks you to cast her chart. No matter the past, she says. Just tell my future. Here.