Xochiti

They named her Xochiti—not for sweetness,
but for the bloom that breaks stone.
She was bartered in the market of Texcoco,
wrapped in reed mats, ten cacao beans for her worth.

Only nine rains old
when her mother vanished into the maize fields
and never came back.

Her first master beat the rhythm of the sun into her back.
Her second called her “quiet one,”
never knowing her dreams screamed
in the language of eagle drums
and obsidian knives.

She swept temples
where priests walked like thunder.
She plucked feathers for noble cloaks,
her small fingers aching with beauty
she could never wear.

At night, she carved poems into clay shards
and hid them beneath the cactus roots—
verses no one would read:

I am not your possession.
I am fire walking on coals.
I am not your flower.
I am the thorn that lives beneath it.

She watched warriors burn the sky with their cries.
She watched women grind maize
as if grinding memory.

And when the gods demanded blood,
she was not chosen.
Too small. Too silent.
They did not see the thunder she had become.

She lived.

And that was the rebellion.