Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Train poem, 9/28, 10:30-ish AM

It's been months since you've seen me
months since you've heard my voice, hugged me, kissed my cheek
Do you remember my shape?
Or have you added and taken away?
Would I surprise you now?
Am I taller, shorter?
Does my voice register in an unfamiliar timbre?
Am I a girl you knew, or have I suddenly become a woman?

I miss you

The feel of your skin and quirky smiles
humor and biting wit
half-formed knowledge puffed up to full truth (did you ever believe the things we argued?)
brokenness and remoteness
No
not the remoteness
Never the remoteness
Otherwise I'd have to believe that months could pass
without you missing me at all

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

The Archery Master's Children (9/?)

H’tsi jammed her small fists into her hips.

Reading the impending fight like a black storm cloud on the horizon of a clear sky, Sothi put her hands on her sister’s shoulder. “Stupid boy.”

H’tsi snorted. “Yeah.” Skirting S’toh and the dead snake he still held, the girls went through the packs and redistributed the contents so that Sothi could carry her strung bow comfortably. She was glad she’d brought her shorter, less elegant hunting bow. Sothi had always had the bad habit of breaking or ruining things that were either expensive or hard to fix. Her father’s rule about replacing what you carelessly broke wasn’t limited to bows and arrow shafts. As such Sothi had an apprenticeship with every craft master within a day’s walk of the village, and there were still some she couldn’t learn from until she was older. The longbow she’d broken at least three times that year alone, but she was sure that was partly due to her still growing skill as a bow-maker. She still couldn’t do it from start to finish on her own, after all. She just didn’t have the arm-strength. S’toh and H’tsi never did anything worse to their bows than snapping the string. S’toh, though, was on his way to being as good a tailor as he was an archer.

All re-packed (S’toh had even stored away the snake) they started off down the road, making minor adjustments to the straps on their packs as they went. Silence reigned over them for a few meters as they each thought their own thoughts. None of them were particularly looking forward to the watering hole anymore, but they weren’t ready to go home either.

Untitled

“If I wanted to be one of your conquests, I’d get in your way. But I don’t, so I don’t.” She’d said it with a flat smile, brows raised and eyes unblinking.

“Whoever said they’re conquests, dear? Or that I wanted you to be one?”

Her eyebrows slid over him—over his day-old stubble, the cigarette dangling from his fingers, the smart but shabbily worn suit with its sharp crease down the legs. She snorted. “You do. Every time you look at me like that, you do.”

She turned away from him, in the direction of her workstation. He jumped in front of her. “Whatever do you mean? I’m not looking at you in any way in particular.”

She laughed. A short bark that reverberated around the open space and turned heads. “Aren’t you?”

This time when she left, he let her go.

-Fin-