Since becoming my son’s only friend, I’ve had to become Baba Yaga.

He wants to get boiled alive in my cauldron.
To be eaten whole. Don’t spit out my bones, he says.
He wants to burrow his mane of curls back
into my belly and beat me with sticks and pull
out my hair and sleep his face earthward
into my face. He wants to drown inside me.
Wants consumption. To be consumed.
Be all-consuming. He doesn’t need
a mortar and pestle to fly. My body will always
do. Become everything and everyone
he makes believe. Become the hut on chicken’s feet
and my mother, baba, grandma, old hag, babulya,
beloved. Baba Yaga, he says, be my friend,
because what lonely boy wouldn’t fall in love
with the ugly he knows will swallow him?

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach (www.juliakolchinskydasbach.com) emigrated from Ukraine as a Jewish refugee when she was six. She is the author of three poetry collections: 40 Weeks (YesYes Books, 2023) available https://www.yesyesbooks.com/product-page/40-weeks, Don’t Touch the Bones, and The Many Names for Mother. Her poems have appeared in POETRY, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and AGNI, among others. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. In Fall 2023, Julia will join Denison University as Assistant Professor of English/Creative Writing.