Anemone

Even in love, permafrost. Cellared autumn against incipient winter, scarlet glass,
a blaze of coral against velvet night. Exhale your prayers, visible breath,
take off your gloves. Settle here in the earth next to me and taste the chill.
How deep my roots here and still reaching for your hands, my refuge in rosemary.

I want them sunk to the wrist at the harvest moon
and seeking, I want them tangled in my hair to unearth me, turning my face
to the heat that lights my skin. Season-agnostic I tend the shape of you, held close,
awaiting convergence. There is always space for you in my garden bed. 

Some flowers need the cold to bloom; you are the only warmth I need.
I have no heart for any other--let me be your shelter when you seek the sea,
where the currents catch their breath at your every whispered word. Lay me
more than six feet down, what's left of me lit against the ocean floor,

burning wires wound tight in my marionette limbs, tethered where weeping
Tethys rages still. Sing me from the deep, call me from the catacombs
where dawn never breaks, see me tattooed in night skies and hung with pearls.
I am only foliage, dark under the veiled moon, bright petals on the verge. 

I dream of you while I sleep through summer, lost in salt water. I will wait for you,
tend my garden thalassic, where the stars are always sharp enough to cut us free.

Level 32 Ranger

This might be the weirdest birthday I've ever had. There are things that have happened over the years that, written down, seem like the fiction I work so hard to create. But this is the year that things are truly strange. There is not much that I can say about it, here. There are too many words unsaid.

I have left abusive relationships, I have clawed my way back to the surface. I have looked into a night sky that seemed endless and unforgiving, searching for a single star.

I have written and I have not written, I have left too many things unfinished. I have lost companions and lovers and friends and a home. I have left a place that never suited me and retreated to take asylum in a place where it rains, even storms, and where fireflies hang in the dim summer nights.

I am feeling my way back into my own skin. The damage is legendary. But I can still tread water.

I do not know where I am going, or how I will manage to move on.  I do not know, anymore, what I want from life, other than to put one word in front of another, one foot in front of the other, and go on. I want to write down the books in my head, not because I feel that the stories should be free of me, but because I want there to be more to life than dead pages cluttering up my brain.

When you come here to see an empty page, celebrate for me. Because when I have written every word down in ink like blood, when I have emptied both barrels at the page, hit my target, and moved on? I will be free.

I want to persist like Octavia. I want to breathe again.

I want to live.

Colonies

"This is really special," he says with a grin. "This one is a tomato." Elise takes the small, slightly squishy orb from him with pursed lips. She holds it up to the light and turns it carefully from side to side. Stephen watches, his long fingers twitching slightly. The sounds of the lab bubble around them, a shell of privacy held in place by the murmurs of their co-workers, all involved in recreating the delights that once were commonplace.

Elise's white hair glistens under the bright lab lights, a creamy pale color, rich as sheep's milk. She brings the tomato close to her face and inhales its sour, slightly spicy aroma. When she smiles at last, her eyes are nearly hidden in a collapse of soft and wrinkled flesh. "When I was a child, we would hide in the seed storage unit and tell each other stories about fruit. You can't describe the color blue as a flavor, but we talked about blueberries and the color of the mythical sky in the same breath as the idea of lemonade.

"The idea of summer as a cultural wellspring," she continues, "is not something a child ought to be able to argue from. But the desolation among our parents and grandparents, when they realized that we would never see a fig tree, a strawberry--it was a sadness that encouraged us. I never thought I would see a tomato. We imagined them tiny, the size of a thumbnail, heart-shaped and violet, and we knew they were poison."

"Poison?"

"I think Erica had found some old records. Today, of course, I recognize the Solanaceae are more than that, but at the time..." She trails off, and Stephen lifts his eyes to her mouth.

She is old, older than the memory of nights and days, and still the young scientist wants nothing more than to press the fruit into her mouth with a kiss. But it is the first tomato, the first and only success in a thousand years, and the sacrilege would be unimaginable.

The lights in the lab flicker, and the sound of workers, the sound like a thousand voices humming, falters. Elise raises her ancient face to the ceiling, a sighted Tiresias straining to listen.

"The fans," she whispers, the faintest look of dismay beginning to dawn. "The air exchangers have stopped." The lights flicker again and the workers begin to run, heading for their cells, their families.

In the panic, no one sees her take the first bite.

--
For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, SAM gave me this prompt: "Summer pleasure, winter sin."
I prompted FlamingNyx with "blood under the fingernails and sand on a red velvet skirt."

Landscape

I don't like cities
concrete fountains and spurs
instead of trees
instead of the horizon
or the shore.

I wonder if we all begin
by drawing ourselves against
a white background. No sketch
of my face has context,
in no painting I have made

with my hands
does a background exist. Not
even arabesques,
not a grid or a line, although
sometimes a shadow
makes its way below.

I want to be seen in candlelight
or on the sand. A view
of the porch, where fireflies gather
in the green; or the mist reaches
subtle hands to touch your face.

I am beginning to refute the blank--
I am tenacious, can hold on for ages and empires,
but I can also let go.

Apokálypsis

Here is a story, or maybe a song. 
One night in the house of pollution,
the house of unrest:

I ran from a sky on fire,
but this is not what I remember. I pushed open a rusted door,
screened with silted crossed wire,
studded with iridescent wings, pushed past a yellowed
notice. The words are lost, but the carpet was green

with moss or damp, missing decades hanging heavy in the air
and the end was in us, the end was with us even then.

We were there, in that lampless waste.
There was no sun to throw our secret shadows into relief,
hands touching behind the cream-laid screen, faces close together
And there was no moon to hear any whispered word.

The dream was dark. I ran on the dead,
tracked my heels and crushed resin scent away from the trees,
and I woke speaking.

I woke to find myself lost.
I sat up to sing of the end.

What Lies Ahead

The Albatross

"Look, kid, this is ridiculous. There are no lamps out there. It's physically impossible."

"I know what I saw, Anchormaster," the boy insisted. His ragged sailcloth leggings rustled as he shifted uncomfortably. "I know I wasn't supposed to be in the ambassador's quarters, and I'll take the lashes for that, but I am not lying. Was a man, on a cobblestone street, bold as brass, true as iron."

The anchormaster looked down at the rough-sanded planks, considering. The boy's bare, calloused feet scraped quietly as he shifted position again. "Report to the whipmistress in the morning. Five for trespassing. I will speak with her as to the rest of your sentence after I visit the ambassador. You will take the night watch on C deck and keep the whole thing quiet until I finish my investigation. Is this clear?"

The boy saluted and left hastily, perhaps afraid the anchormaster would change his mind. Punishments were not usually so lenient aboard this particular ship.

Anchormaster Lenn walked toward the foredecks, glaring at his timepiece. The ambassador was in one of her meetings for at least another hour. Plenty of time to check her quarters and make sure the boy hadn't interfered with anything important. He could even be back to his post before the Captain made her rounds. He headed into the lodging corridor, moving as quietly as he could. Too many people on this trip kept odd hours. He thought how glad he would be when this shipment was over, and of the spiced coffee he would drink when they made planetfall. It had been far too long since his last shore leave.

All his musings were cut short when he noticed the door to the ambassador's quarters hanging open. His mouth compressed in irritation and he mentally added two lashes to the boy's punishment for leaving the corridor unsecured.

Annoyed, he strode into the lodgings, less concerned now about the noise than about the potential security breach. The automatic lights shifted on, and a quick survey of the suite yielded no visible problems. He stood in the center room for a few moments, listening for any movement. When the silence remained, he headed into the receiving room, where the boy had claimed to see his latest impossibility. Two steps into the room, he froze.

There, in the port window, silhouetted against the infinitude of space, it was clear. A section of cobblestoned street, a wrought-iron streetlamp, and a man where no men should be, framed by the bulk of the planet looming over them all.



For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Kat challenged me with "I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw him standing under the street light..." and I challenged GUS with "Malachite and amber, mother of pearl and stars."

Hijacked Frequencies

(begin transmission)

(radio static fades into sprightly music, slightly fuzzy)

"Hello again, everyone, and welcome to this week's broadcast of Cooking with Rye! I'm Rye Ellison, and tonight we're making soup, just like last week and the week before that! Everyone have their rifles handy? Good.

We'll begin by heading out into the backyard and bagging ourselves a chicken. If you didn't have enough foresight to learn to keep poultry and livestock before the, uh, before last year, any carcass will do. The fresher, the better, though--we want to keep all those nutrients in useful forms.

You shouldn't need your rifle for this, but we never go anywhere without one, right? Good.

I've prepped everything in advance; here we have one large onion, some celery, lots of freshly chopped garlic, and herbs from the garden. I like to use rosemary in just about everything, that brightness really comes through, even if you cook it too long. There's some savory, a little sage, and of course thyme, our Old Reliable.

Once you've dressed out and plucked your chicken, or prepared, uh, your meat of whatever origin, no judgment here, haha, you can drop it in your large stock pot. Cover it up with fresh water, and let it cook until it's done. This will yield not only the meaty centerpiece of your soup, but the delicious broth that binds the whole thing together.

Take that meat and broth and set it aside. In your stock pot, now, you'll want a tiny bit of fat, oil, what have you, to cook those onions in. Saute the onions until transparent, then add your celery and garlic. Let those cook gently for just a few minutes, but don't let them brown. Few things will draw unwelcome, ah, guests like the piercing smell of burning garlic.

Now you can pour that broth back in, skimming off the fat if you prefer, but remember: fat equals energy! Tie your fresh herbs into a bouquet garni, if you have string, and drop it into your stock. Leave this going over low heat while you turn your attention to pulling the meat from all these tiny bones.

Now, when you bury your trash later, be sure to save some of your hollow bones. They make great pens and you can even make jewelry out of some of them! Bones from larger animals can be used for ammo boxes, salt cellars, just about anything.

Soup is just such a reliable, high-energy food for people in our, uh situation, you really can't go wrong--"

(footsteps clattering, a lower voice hesitantly volunteers something, mostly inaudibly)

"Oh, hey there! Hey, Peter! Listen, everyone, this is my friend Peter, he'll be joining us for dinner tonight!"

"Uh, hi, everyone--how are you all doing out there?"

"Everyone inside? Wonderful. Peter, you locked the doors, right? Great. So now we pull that stock pot off the fire, and open some bottles of water for a real treat tonight.

Okay, here's our soup! Wow, it smells just wonderful. I'd love to share some with you, but there's really no more room in the bunker, ha ha--"

(glass crashing, the obscene sound of metal doors being bent inward)

"Oh my God, okay, got your rifle handy? This is where we sign--"

(microphone screeching, the clattering of a table being overturned)

"Oh shit, Peter! Peter, are you okay? Peter! P--"

(multiple gunshots, the dull sound of bullets in flesh, a low moaning)

"NO! NO! Oh my GOD, PLEASE--"

(a revolting lip-smacking sound, then something bubbling through thick liquid...someone gumming mashed potatoes, perhaps.)

(increased feedback from the microphone mingled with full-throated screams, an ear-piercing burst of static)

(end transmission)