Superficial ceremony, sacrificial ceremony. Lest the medicines never condone your offerings — forked tongue. I was told many women came before me, like lambs, the chosen ones, or the selected few based upon your windigo taste. I stood before you in a slaughter room full of people who adore you, but I don’t. Heyoka hechya sni, siceya ephe, little do they know you are the backwards one. The man who turns into ashes, The White Buffalo Calf Pipe story, you’re the one. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, who in my own community can I trust?

No one.

Come Lakota princess and place your bet. Little did I know I was a pawn, “play the game” often said. Young and naive. Eager to please, eager to believe. Eager to achieve. Eager to succeed. Futures can be bought but can’t be sought, really it wasn’t foreseen by me. Cashing paychecks and ruining lives. Profiting from false promises and school integrity built on lies.

I prayed you went back from whence you came... my prayers had to be powerful against the powers of your manipulation, expert and masterful.

I offer tobacco and know that this world is better off without you. Lest unci maka forever reject you from her womb. So you will always remain in ceremony. To drag buffalo skulls hooked onto your back for all of eternity, in perfect circles around what you’ve done to me. Lest your flesh never break free from the bending of my cottonwood tree. Your back and chest riddled with scars by the relatives you hurt in this life. Your spirit never to return back to the stars because you are not ready to be honest with the community with what you really are.

A monster that wears two silver braids with long arms and long legs.

You may always fool others with your smile but you will never fool me again.

I’ve decided not to continue the sacrificing of my own spirit but to endure the burden of truth-telling. Now, the community calls me “that girl”. Stained by you and your wrong doings. Tainted by you and all your wrong doings. Vengeance is for the Creator — I can’t tolerate that type of loyalty. Narcissism has a way of shaking your dreams like a peyote rattle in a sac religious ceremony.