"Bakotsu" by Romie Stott © 2026
Content warning:
1.
I was the horse who melted under the heat of the rendering.
My bones fished out for other meanings, intending my hide
scraped off and used for better things. The secret of what a horse knows
still bubbles and screams inside me. But the flames didn’t stop
there, instead ate the long strings of my mane glowing with the charcoal dust
and my hooves grew to long jelly pools. My eyes melted to rivers
of new rage. You can understand how a being used to
fear would be liquid to all sorts of danger. You can
understand how such a horrible death shapes the ghost
and hide that grows back, stitching together of new bones
into thatched bundles of drums and the beat beat beat beat
of feet into the night air.
2.
In the evenings now I sit with my toad friend
the yadomori who understands my need
to coat myself in the swamp moss and lichen,
to cool the nerves still somehow
ghosting through my form, hiding myself
in clothing so the rivulets of me
don’t show inside the tea hut.
Yadomori’s long dark hair hides his pain
at tasting the boot of a human in his former life.
We huddle together under mosquito nets
and try to look towards the futures we seek:
one with many flies to catch,
many wings to carry morsels to his spectral mouth.
A toad life without being trampled.
And me, seeking with hooves that trample out
sparks of the pretenders, the so-called
messengers of fire, the so-called kindness
of tyrants, the so-called needle
in the haystack
found
piercing my mouth
with molten bit and bridle.
No more tyrants, no more kings
to torch our world with stupidity:
let them always taste of hoof
and nothing else.
[Inspired by the bakotsu and yadomori yōkai research at Matthew Meyer’s yokai.com]
[Publication of this poem was made possible by a donation in honor of C. S. E. Cooney during our annual Fund Drive.]