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APOTHEOSIS: DROUGHT

By Ashley Hajimirsadeghi

These days, even spare breadcrumbs are hard to come by. My mother steals seeds
from the birds, jokes she plucks them from their beaks, claims even the ocean’s water

isn’t free anymore. We became who our ancestors feared, the kind of people who
forgot our gods & cursed at the sun, denied how it both gave & refused life.

Even the seagulls, in the middle of winter, are here, taking what they can from
restaurant dumpsters or leftover scraps a kind, guilt-ridden stranger dumps into

faded parking lots. If I could do my life all over again, I would leave footprints in
the mud every time a storm drifted past. Call this a recipe of survival, evidence I was

once here, like how the spirits laid down by the river before it flooded,
leaving memories composting among fish carcasses, indentations in the shape

of constellations. I like to think sometimes I will kiss the river’s mouth, algae & all,
to see a reflection of their past, to taste how sickeningly sweet & bitter it is. Instead,

I reap what I sow, spit my prayers onto the cracked, broken earth, asking for rain
once more, & tell myself this is not enough. It is never enough.

 

 

 

Listen as Ashley Hajimirsadeghi reads APOTHEOSIS: DROUGHT.
Added: Tuesday, June 17, 2025  /  Used with permission.
Ashley Hajimirsadeghi
Photo by Alexander Wright.

Ashley Hajimirsadeghi is an Iranian American multimedia writer, artist, and journalist born, raised, and writing in Baltimore, Maryland. Her creative writing has appeared in Passages North, The Cortland Review, Salamander, RHINO, Salt Hill, and The Journal, among others. Her work is the recipient of awards and support from the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, Fulbright Program, U.S. State Department, Brooklyn Poets, and the University of Arizona. She is an Assistant Editor at Sundress Publications and the author of the chapbook Cartography of Trauma (dancing girl press). Learn more at Ashley's website.

Image Description: Ashley Hajimirsadeghi stands outside. She has medium-length brown hair and wears a buttoned-up short sleeve blue blazer. Ashley is on a college campus and behind her are trees, a paved path, and buildings. 

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