Ananke

These are the flaws that make it mine:
a slanted stitch, a hole, a miscount, a wavering hem
that flows from side to side instead of marching steadily on.

The hands that make these things are as contrary, each
slow shift, each clicking needle a testament to shallow
waters. Each wrist flick, each knuckle crack, a metronome.

Contradiction in every cell. Wide palms and narrow fingers,
spread aslant to pull a thread, to snip or coax just a little farther on.
I cannot weave any longer, but I can cull. Press a finger into the

hollow of this wristbone, press your lips against the pulse that beats
there, grey wings thrashing against a black iron cage, grey wool winding
around ebony needles, grey pinstripes on silk like dark waters.

Slipped stitches, dropped skeins, slow and steady will make no
imperfect thing. Speed alone will kill, rushing headlong into the end.

Knot it tight and move on.

pour encourager les autres

when the razor skips over thin skin
and blood wells up,
falling on the shower floor like rain,

you never notice.

like whiskey in a parched throat,
the pulse and burn
of ink pooled on your stomach,
black and spangled with light,

scarlet footprints on dark carpet,
a stubbed toe, cracked nail weeping

camouflaged tears.
the stain is still there, hidden,

until one day it disappears,
that secret piece of you,
and you never notice at all.

Huldra

It is after three. I can hear a drip from somewhere in the house, some faucet reminding me to sleep. I have turned on the music to hide it, but the beat shaking in my bones taps the same rhythm. My skull is a kettle heated to boiling and you are sleeping, responsibly, in your narrow bed so far from mine.

The storm has passed and the rain has slowed. I am waiting on a package. There is nothing at the door no matter how many times I check, not since I discovered the slip to be signed yesterday morning. I want the books inside, but I want the shoes more. Impossible shoes, lacing tight over the arch and nosebleed-heels stretching my calves to screaming. Fuck-me pumps. Fuck-you boots. Somewhere in between, the reality of life in a strange new place.

I have never been good at making friends, only finding lovers. I can only take pictures of my back, painted in Victorian wallpaper patterns. I bend at the waist and stretch imaginary muscles, pull my hair down to cover the emptiness and wear the sorts of dresses that only emphasize my utter lack of humanity. I am not beautiful, no matter what you say, no matter the wisps of thought that escape my mouth on a misty night, no matter the wideness and calm of my eyes. The vulnerable look on my face, they will tell you, is only a trap for the unwary. There can be no true feeling from someone like me.

No. The feelings I have had! They burned me hollow, they were coals scooped from different hearths and set in my skin to char. Piece by piece, how I craved the burn, the ash, the fall. Corded and caught. I have been touched by no one since. Dancing in the forest, dancing in the sea. I dance because of--or is it despite--my lack of an audience, and I will dance for you, if you are unlucky enough to be caught in my gaze. I have so many names, pet names, endearments breathed in my ear at climax, epithets, each a choked whisper bubbling from the throat of a dying man, in all the languages of the world. But I am not a threat, I am nothing, nothing, not even the wind in your face as you run.

Only a woodwife, stained dark and hollow and waiting to fill with someone else's need.

Dryad

I learned to be cruel when I was young,
and my teachers were always older
wiser in the ways of hurt

and we do not hurt each other
before we have learned to hurt ourselves

the pain in your voice draws blood
up to the surface of my skin, welling from every
deep breath, every last thought

of a world without you.

I light candles, each tiny flame a lesser
hurt in a sea of anguish, a tide of hellish loss
engulfing me, dragging me down.

I am heavy with it, swallowing
my own pain like shards of glass
before it can cut you

and I am spent, exhausted
and alone--not alone--
it ticks and chimes like a countdown, brass gears

shifting in an expanse of wretched silence, scarab-back
shining, fleeing the sonar of its own clicks and clacks.
I will beg and I will bargain for you, and never
ever look back. I'm calling you out,

I'd pull you out of hell with the notes of my last dying breath.
Without the light in your eyes I am afraid
my leaves will fall, my little moon will wane.

For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause.

Sleep well, beloved. 

Slit-tongued

It is not yet spring. The urge rises from within,
  as it always has, to paint my skin in cherry-
  blossom shadows on pure ivory powder.
  Black lines and hard edges of serrated leaf
  serve as contrast, serve as a fence to keep
  it all in. I cannot feel alive in winter, I wither
  in summer's heat. Let me be a dancer in the
  bright autumn and a maiden in flowering
  spring, where the sparrows nest in peony
  branches, where the petals fall to matcha-
  scented winds, where gardens are arranged,
  seeming endless, until the end.

The Point of Roughness

Midwinter spring is its own season, each day in grey and smoky green on muddy snow marching in sodden boots toward the solstice. It's cold in small bites, then suddenly warm, every breath of air fastening its teeth in a lover's ear, whipping loose hair across the face, then the shock of ice down the neck.

It is a fleeting season, fleeing before the gnawing specters of the longest night, the coldest months.

There is a hedge along the hill, still green against the rocky drifts, and it is covered in the wind's scattered offerings, blossoming not with petals but perfect geometric crystals. If you came this way, taking the route you would be likely to take, from the place you would be likely to come from, you might never notice the difference. This is the hedgerow that held out handfuls of honeyed blossoms in the hot summer when we said goodbye.

It is not the end of the world. That lies in England, or so I am told, by many a poem and song, somewhere behind a headstone, somewhere in the fog of the night's passing. Somewhere in the mist let out like the breath of green and living things. And there are other places, which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws, or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city, but this is not why we are here, not something to speak in words on the shortest day of the year.

So we go behind the hedge, past the rocks in the hill, crooked old teeth of the earth standing still in a cast circle. Taking the hand of the person next to you in your own is an act of contrition, tribute paid to the dead shaking and sweating under our feet.

There, yes, there and then, what the dead had no speech for, when living, they can tell you, being dead:

The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. They whisper their threats, only just inaudibly, into the black and terrible night. We refute them with our pulse, with the song of living breath, with our stories and laughter held bright against Godfather Death.

We will speak of their dim lands someday, surely, but not today. Today we keep vigil for the extinguished sun, the brightness descendent into the underworld to speak with the dead in our place. Here, the intersection of the timeless moment between one year and the next, one inhalation of deep night exhaled into blue-banded dawn, inhaling: never. Exhaling: always.

So it goes, never and always. Earth and air, fire and water, incense rising from a burning cup into the last pale stars. The inexorable dead are silent for another three-quarter turn, the dead who rattle their bones against the dreams of held hands and gentle kisses. Implacable and resolute and tasting of despair.

Silent, yes, the dead may be, but they still make their motions in my sleep. They dance under my feet and leave me wakeful, wakeful. Thick yarn dangles from wooden needles, and there is Earl Grey tea in a white teapot under the world's blanket of snow, until the winter melts away into spring. I want to grow roses in blue clay pots. I want to write arias, bridges belling, belying the flutter in my stomach, in my heart. Then the newness of the year steals away all the words I might have had.

Summer has never returned the favor of my vocabulary, even in the Communion chalice of red-staining blackberries, hand-picked from martial canes, the juice mixed with blood from thorn-pricked fingers. I dance with the dead and hold silence in my heart.

There are reasons, but what they were I cannot say. They rely upon words I can not now speak in any comprehensible fashion, for last year's words belong to last year's language. And next year's words await another voice.

--


For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Tara Roberts challenged me with "New Year's resolutions - your own or a story about keeping or breaking resolutions."


The italicized lines are taken from T.S. Eliot's "Little Gidding," the fourth of Four Quartets.

Causality

It was five days from my birthday.  My heart and mind were with you, and I was having trouble sleeping.  There was nothing I could do, nothing I could offer.  I clicked on the video, knowing I would regret it, but needing to hammer this truth home, to offer up my peace of mind as a sacrifice.  It was nothing like a fair exchange for the price you paid.

We only learned about you in bits and pieces, fragments, days after your death.  It was a wildfire in my brain, obliterating all reason.  It roared behind every thought, every second:  the whole world was watching when you were shot, when you lay on the ground, face uncovered to the sky, blood pouring out from behind the hands of the helpful.  The whole world was watching, and nothing was done.  The whole world was watching, and I could not explain to anyone the fury blazing in my heart.

Here, it is not the same.  We are not under the same burdens, but we are still being silenced.  I see the raw energy of my people and I am stalled.  Every day I feel it building, the knowledge that we are paying the price of indifference, the fury and resolve.  I am afraid that we will have our own martyrs, and my heart is breaking.

I will go into the camps, and I will be there for you.  I will march in your memory as I have before, and I dream that it will have more of an effect.  I will carry a picture of you and pray that this is the beginning of a true and lasting change.  I will pray that you do not look down in contempt on a world that appears, superficially, to be the home of a free people.  I will pray that there are no martyrs like you in our midst, and that the appearance of our freedom will remain intact.

These are the nights that I whisper, "the whole world is watching," and remember the lost, and pray that I am not lying to myself.  This is not Iran, and these are not your people, but please know that you are remembered, and your voice is not silenced.  My voice is small, but I raise it for you, despite my terror.  I will not be a coward anymore.

I have stayed out of this conflict for too long, quietly supporting it from the sidelines but never contributing. Now I occupy for the people who inspired these protests.  The Iranians, who still hold my heart.  The Egyptians, whose success encourages us to persevere.  But mostly, I occupy for Neda Agha-Soltan, whose dying face still haunts my dreams and whose memory commands me to fight for the America in which I long to believe.

"Neda, don't be afraid.  Neda, stay with me."

Netjeret

The harbor was a green and fragrant place, a bulwark against the dusty gold of the desert. There were fish and markets, scribes and antiquities. The sheep's-wool and wide-striped coarse cloth of the desert tribes sharing stall-space with the mist-weight silks and fine light linen of the river people, the tumultuous embroideries, sinuous animals and flowers of thread that had traveled from a strange and distant empire.

The scent of the market, nearly indescribable, a riot of offal and onions, thick cakes soaked in spiced honey, studded with nuts and dried fruits. Horses and baking bread, grilled meats and carefully tended vegetables. The endless perfume of flowers mingling with cones and piles of exquisite incense, precious scented oils, attar of rose, balms and fragrances and beeswax candles, the dry scents of papyrus and reed baskets, dried black figs and purple-dyed linen.

The sounds of happy people, amused or wry, light and pleasant, in many languages. The merchants and their customers alike, fat with good living, joking in slippery Greek or dark-spiced Egyptian, with so little of the solemn speech of Roman citizens, and less of the vulgar Latin of the sharp-faced legionnaires.

It was always a mystery, to him, to walk among them and remain unrecognized, to speak to the people in his clumsy Greek without terrifying them into silence. When the sun fell sharp behind the crimson slash of the horizon, and the night rose like a curtain all around us, we drank wine like madder velvet from silver bowls, drank deep. Our lips and fingers stained with pomegranate. Those nights are gone, torn like wet papyrus into shreds against the howling desert wind.

Today my harbor is full of quinqueremes and libernians and there is no bulwark against the legions. Our armies have joined with Octavian's. The remaining men mutter lies to my husband. People fleeing in the streets squeal that I have betrayed him. Hissing like snakes, their whispers tell him that I have abandoned him as I have abandoned all my husbands, condemning him to a traitor's fate. I cannot be here when he returns; how could I face that pain, the wrath of perceived righteousness?

I built the two of us a tomb. I wanted to sleep there with him, forever, the safest place in Alexandria, filled to the roof-beams with the treasures of Egypt and the Ptolemies, the pharaohs of Upper and Lower Egypt, buttery gold and carnelian. Malachite and lapis gleaming in every corner, jasper and turquoise and the silver bowls that once held our wine. I can send another messenger to my husband, can bid him come, meet me in the home I built for our long night together, but will he listen?

I pull away from the wide window, kohl-dark tears smudged along my cheekbones. The view of my desecrated harbor is spur enough to order my maids away, to pull my last pieces of jewelry out of trunks.  I look in the mirror and see, truly, at last. The Pharaoh of Egypt must always descend into the underworld, must weigh a heavy heart on golden scales. I will go to my tomb alone, though it is the last thing I ever wanted to do. I will await my husband, and we will prevail or die. We have no choice.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Kurt challenged me with "It was the last thing I would ever want to do, but I didn't have any other choice." and I challenged Mary Terrani with "King of Pentacles".


This is tagged "well-mined myth" for a reason. I wouldn't even call it "historical fiction".  Can't hit a home run every week, I suppose.

empire

There is a song I hear, here
where blacking fear does follow;
a shadow deep-lodged in truth,
a fruit left sleeping hollow.

"κυρία, ἐ," on each note,
quotidian insistence--
"In the midst of revelry,
the pity of existence."

I will not sing along, though
it lays me low with sorrow;
cannot feel that hope is lost,
though at what cost tomorrow?


Second attempt at an awdl gywydd for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads. The Greek should read "Kyria, e," a riff on the Kyrie eleison, recast for a Creatrix who, I'd imagine, might be a little disappointed in our current state of affairs.

The Flood of the World that Was

"Hail to thee, O Nile!

Who manifests thyself over this land, and comes to give life to Egypt!

Come and prosper!
Come and prosper!
O Nile, come and prosper!
O you who make men to live through his flocks and his flocks through his orchards!
Come and prosper, come,
O Nile, come and prosper!

Hail to thee, O my god, Hapi of the North and South, lord of fishes and birds of the marsh, husband of Meret, Naunet, Nekhebet, Wadjet, father of our beautiful Kem, king of Ta Mery, hail. Hear us, great Hapi, and have mercy. Have you been detained in the world of the dead? The black sweet mud of your banks is drying to blow out over the red lands, and our people cry out their bone-deep hunger. We have given you jewelry and meat, sent our children to call you home. We dry into hollow reeds, hard and old, suffering the lack. Hap-Meht or Hap-Reset, god of Ta-Sheme'aw and Ta-Mehew both, attend your people, do not let the flood fail-- "

The tablet ends there, its voice silenced forever by events unknown. Iterw, Neilos or Nilos, the Nile we know today is not the same, never the fulsome blue god with overflowing breasts, rising from the Elephantine Isles, traveling through the world of the dead to bring life.

Kemet is no longer Herodotus' gift of the Nile, black shining jewel of the desert, the fruitful land. We have traveled deep into the red lands of the desert and cannot return. Hap-Meht or Hap-Reset, papyrus or lotus, Upper or Lower, neither now will hear us over the growing roar in the lands below, the sharp sounds of missiles and airstrikes, machine guns and hand grenades, factions and fundamentalists.

There, in the mist and the silence that hangs over the yearly inundation of the great delta, the relics of the father of cultivated lands are hidden in the mysteries of other gods, hidden under centuries as heavy as damp wool blankets. Now we are Egypt. Now we are Masr, and the glyph of our name that meant not only "precious blackness" but also "the ending of things" is hidden forever beneath the Greek and Arabic and English of the future tense.

This week's Indie Ink challenge comes from The Drama Mama, who left me a fragment: "...because the river runs through it, an even divide, the old world on one side, the new world on the other like a mirror of past and future."  Which seemed very sad to me, in the context of ancient civilizations and rivers, and who better to articulate this sadness than the prototype for all desert river civilizations?  Hence, my elegy to the world that was.  The fragment of a hymn that is the first paragraph and the names of the ancients are as accurate as I can make them--everything else, I made up.

At any rate, my challenge went out to Kerri, and you can read her response here.

L'espirit de l'escalier

Light is embroidered on your skin
where the shadows dance against stone walls.
We move, swaddled in music, around
marble pillars, between dripping beeswax
tapers, an ocean of heady honey scent
rising from the dim orange flames
and we are lost in the idea of loving
another person, another twisted
lost soul--just like mine, we think.

Loss is a verdant ocean,
deep and green as your eyes,
now swollen with the days of tears
spent on finding my replacement
on the idea of loving someone
anyone
who might understand the echoing darkness
in your head, the music
that could come from anywhere.
Here I am!  Still watching you
from this velvet corner,
waiting, impatient breath held
for the day you cease to mourn.

Love is not always a brilliant blaze,
manufacturer of its own light,
not always something beautiful
and easy to see.
I would give my embers
into your keeping
in a breath, if this empty shade
could still breathe.