La Doncella by Derwen Morfayel

Still, we can see her five-hundred-year-old young face.

“Your little sister,” I begin, “was touched by lightning. Were you a virgin for the sun?

Who was the boy who sits, tied up so tightly, blessed with vomit and with blood?”

But the Maiden doesn’t answer.

I think of asking whether old Llullaillaco’s water is dark and murky, lying, or simply words, if deaths on a mountain can grant good harvest. No. What I really want to ask is, “Did someone sit to cradle you, to sing you all to sleep with a lullaby after the coca leaves?”

Head against breast, the braids of her hair are still there.

Derwen Morfayel is a writer born in Spain and bred in Wales. She has a degree in Creative Writing and completed her first novel for an MPhil. Her recent work appears in issues #4 of the literary magazines Severine and Shooter. Follow her on Twitter @DerwenMorfayel and visit her blog: www.derwenmorfayel.com.