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[youaretwicemine]

Once upon a time there was a boy who did not know his place. He saw around corners and through walls, stumbled a step ahead of the others with his hands curled up in his pockets. Everyone talked to him all the time, wanting to know what was coming, and everyone left again as soon as he'd told them. Sometimes they went away angry, when he told them the truth and it wasn't what they'd hoped. He told the truth still, always. He held truth in curled hands and trickled it out to strangers who were always leaving.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who did not know her name. She faded into corners with the cobwebs, swept up the dirt people left behind. No one ever spoke to her during the hubbub of parties or sought her out for a dance, no one saw her gather the delicate stem glasses in translucent hands and no one watched as she picked up the bedraggled greenery the fine-gowned ladies had dropped. There was always a tiny jar of fresh flowers on the mantelpiece, the morning after a party.

[youaretwicemine]

Once upon a time, there was a girl who did not know her name. She faded into corners with the cobwebs, swept up the dirt people left behind. No one ever spoke to her during the hubbub of parties or sought her out for a dance, no one saw her gather the delicate stem glasses in translucent hands and no one watched as she picked up the bedraggled greenery the fine-gowned ladies had dropped. There was always a tiny jar of fresh flowers on the mantelpiece, the morning after a party.

[youaretwicemine]

Precipice

“Listen and wait,” The wise ones say, “Young is the morning And long is the day.” She has ears without hearing, So she batters and bangs On the door that stands shut Still she hammers and clangs, With hands weary and bleeding She places her prize On a timeline invisible, So it has to be now Or…something…will happen Perfect doesn’t allow For a faltering heart Or a step that’s unsure So give us your email And take this brochure Now plan all that’s ahead Stop crying, you’re blessed! Achievement’s the answer If you clean up your mess! She finds herself stumbling One blustery day Remembering words The wise ones say “Listen and wait, Your mess is beloved Your tears he has treasured, Your failures are covered.” The door still stands shut But the path leads beyond So she turns to the east, For a new day has dawned.

[youaretwicemine]

Pyrite

I’m thinking of October more than I’ll allow, I’m living in the liminal rather than now. I looked for buried treasure in the month of gold, But they laughed and only left for me a foolish man’s crown.

I waited for November sore beneath the shame Of sparks flown from that crown; it ruthlessly became A grave I wouldn’t visit though the death-knell tolled, While the sparks in flagrant choler burned my grass palace down.

I skated through December, lived to tell the tale It’s hardest to be flawless, harder still to fail. I shrank from finding solace and from growing old, As if clutching hope in blistered hands were best done alone.

That first October I maintained we’d all be fine The next two I spent thinking grief was a crime. But this October greets me with a tale to be told, Of the blistered hands healing and the fool’s crown disowned.

[youaretwicemine]

@tzarina-alexandra so that story idea. There's a poem called We Have Not Long to Love, with the first two lines "We have not long to love/ Light does not stay" and the idea of the poem is that nothing lasts forever so live in the moment and cherish the people you love etc etc. Which is a lovely sentiment! But being me, I read that poem and make it sad--we have not long to love, a night, a day: the cynical part of my brain telling me all the untrue things. "Love isn't worth it--all the people you trust will eventually hurt you and leave you alone. You might have joy now but Watch Out because grief is always hovering over your shoulder." And I think that's STUPID! So my thought was to write a character who struggles with overcoming the inhibition to love freely, to choose love despite potential pain. I want to incorporate the poem somehow, but make the story about how we have eternity to learn how to love, and light DOES stay!

[youaretwicemine]

Beyond the Sea

What if death is just the beginning of the next adventure?

This short story was loosely inspired by the prompt found here. It's not meant to be super polished, it was a one-shot, but feedback and constructive criticism are welcome! I'm also taking title suggestions. I don't think much of Beyond the Sea, it doesn't sum up the idea like I want, but everything else evades me right now.

In Logres, they say the dead pass into a great valley, sheltered on either side by mountains around a calm lake, set apart from the noise and destruction of this world. There they rest, in the land we call Aros, until their legacy has faded and the living remember them no more. Tall crystal-blue ships sail from that valley, and thus the dead pass out of memory, ti hwnt i’r mor, beyond the sea. The winds of the equinox blow through the forest near Edrych Lake, and I shake out my woolen mantle in preparation for the 106th autumn since I left Logres. My coracle swings softly out to the middle of the smooth water, trees arcing from the banks in golden-green panoply. When I arrived here, poisoned by the grief of leaving my family, I hardly left the lake day or night. Clinging to my old life, gazing down through the frigidly still waters at my home, wishing I could travel as far as my sight did, back from this silence. As winter stretched to spring, and months became decades, missing them became less painful. I visited the lake twice a year, watched my children grow and have children of their own, happy their lives were to be filled with joy longer than mine had been. All there was to learn and do in my new life soothed grief for a time, and I soon began using my interest in farming to improve Aros’ food production. I gathered friends about me, whom I loved as dearly as any family, and this, too, helped drive away the darkness. 

The best and worst in this fulfilling season began one day in high summer, while my friends and I inspected the wheat fields in the agricultural district. I heard my name called from behind and turned. 

“Efa?” A man in a crimson tunic, dark-haired and bearded, ran towards me. Alan. My husband. 

It had been nearly fifty years, but his face in that first glimpse looked just as I remembered it from my last moments alive. Only now, instead of concern and pain filling his eyes with tears, joy lit his face more brightly than the golden sun itself. I ran headlong, knocking both of us over in my haste, so that we were kneeling in the mud as he folded me to him and we wept. Looking up, I recalled the way his eyebrows wrinkled and lips pressed when he cried happy tears, the way he’d looked on our wedding day and at the births of each of our children. I had memorized that look, in the first weeks here, fearing I’d never see it again. He caught me staring at his face and flushed beneath his tan, as we studied one another for a moment in silence. 

“You have sunburn,” I said, touching his nose where the skin was peeling slightly. Then the absurdity of that being my first sentence to him in fifty years struck me, and we burst into laughter as Alan helped me to my feet. 

“And you, m’lady, are more speckled than a sparrow, and lighter-haired than usual. But other than these gifts the sun has left us, we are as of old, you and I.” Alan dipped me dramatically for a kiss as I giggled, my witty remark cut happily short.

We dwelt in bliss for a time, visiting the lake together each spring and fall thereafter. Our children had moved out of Logres to neighboring lands, where still we saw them safe with their families. Alan and I organized our own belongings in a new house on the northeastern shore of the lake while we talked about our children– Ellis, Jenna, and Tarian. 

“This change of homeland will mean they don’t join us here in Aros–each country has a different place between one life and the next. But all go across the sea, ti hwnt i’r mor.” 

“It will be good to see them again,” he replied. “Before my ship went down in that gale, I lost the second game of cards to little Llio and she owes me a rematch for best of three.” 

I batted his arm and rolled my eyes. “You’re telling me you sank your ship because you couldn’t beat your 7-year-old granddaughter at cards? Seems you’ve grown old and senile.”

“No, it was because I couldn’t stay away from you a moment longer, my acerbic bride.” He grinned and kissed my cheek.

 As I resumed unpacking, I saw a keepsake box that held a carved wooden whistle. Seeing my curiosity, Alan took it in his hands and turned it between them before he handed it back to me so I could look at the patterns on it. A sparrow holding a sheaf of grain, and what looked like waves on a shore. 

“Remember Tarian, Efa? I mean, remember from before the lake?” 

My last son, who I never got to know beyond his first beautiful day. “Yes, of course.” 

“He loved you so. I know he never truly…well, I told him stories about you, and how you used to whistle for the wind, back home in Logres. Then when he learned to whittle, he made this for me, and told me if I was ever becalmed all I had to do was think of you and whistle for a wind. I took it with me on all my voyages from then on.” 

My heart clenched at this reminder of all I’d missed, but joy trickled in at the thought of my family’s affection. Alan took the whistle and slipped it into his pocket. 

The day before the autumn equinox, some decades later, Alan and I sat near the newly harvested wheat field, talking as we often did of the sea. “We’ll go together,” I said, as we’d planned a thousand times in our fancy. With both our graves visited less and less, our families’ strong memories of us would likely end with the last grandchild, little Llio. “The crystal ship will slip into the water, and we’ll see…I don’t know what. That’s the adventure, I suppose.” 

His head in your lap, Alan agreed. “Adventure, for certain! A full sail in the sunrise and my dearest love by my side, never again to be parted! Often, I wonder what’s beyond–we have guesses, but none who leave ever return. Will it not be splendid to know?” I woke in the night to an empty bed beside me. Alan, where are you? I didn’t find him inside despite calling out, and hurried to the edge of the lake, still wrapped in my blankets. Alan stood looking down the valley to the harbor. He turned at my approach and smiled, but his eyes were sad as he reached to hug me. 

“Darling, I’ve just received the news– Llio died this evening. The ship is ready.” 

I twisted out of his arms to look at his face. “What’s wrong? There’s more, isn’t there? This should be happy news, we get to sail together…” I trailed off as his hand gripped mine tightly, as though he feared I might vanish any moment. 

“Efa…I am to sail in half an hour. You…have not yet been forgotten. The messenger wouldn’t tell me how, he said that you must inquire yourself, but you can’t sail with me and I—” 

He broke off, and sat on the bench, hands covering his face. I went over, tears dimming my eyes, and took his hands and kissed them. Then I buried my face in his chest and we both wept. Neither of us could speak for a while. We broke apart somewhat and our eyes met, and in that look was all our love, and all our sorrow, too. Never have I felt so understood as in that moment. The sun was rising, and at last I broke the silence. 

“I’ll help you pack.”

I do not know how to set down the parting itself. In it was nothing remarkable to any of the others on the pier, no shouted words of farewell, nor even weeping. We had said our goodbyes in that long moment at the lake, and nothing else was needed. Few words passed between us as Alan packed his belongings and we walked to the harbor. The pale logistics of boarding preparations blurred around me; Alan dealt with them speedily, never leaving my side or letting go of my hand. At last he was standing facing me, holding both my hands now, and I knew the sea was taking him away. 

“Alan,” I said, quietly so that no one nearby could hear. I meant to say more and could not, but he seemed to know. 

“I have something for you, Efa.” He pulled out the carved whistle. “To remind you I love you, always. I’ll see you soon. If you’re ever becalmed, think of me and Tarian and whistle for a wind.” And he was gone.

I feel the whistle in my skirt pocket, a small lump of memory, as I paddle out onto the lake now. I slept fitfully last night, unable to stop wondering why he had gone and I had stayed. At last I gave up trying to rest and flung my dark green mantle around my shoulders, marveling at the beauty of the sunrise and marveling still more that I notice–that beauty still arrests me, even now. I look down through the water. My grave, tucked in a corner of the old cemetery, sits bathed in the sunlight of the other world that’s no longer home. No answers there, it looks the same as always. I turn to leave, but a flash of yellow catches my eye as a gray-eyed teenager with a bright golden tunic and scabby knees walks through the rows of stones, carrying a few small blue flowers. She places them on my headstone and looks thoughtfully around, then leaves. Why? I don’t recognize her as a family member, or even someone who looks related to me. 

“I was at the cemetery again, putting flowers on that lady’s grave.” A friend joined her on the way home, and now the girl begins to tell how she went to the field yesterday and wandered across a random grave–mine. Seemingly, she liked my epitaph (I’ve never thought to read it), wondered who I was, and found some spotty records in the bowels of the local library that mention my marriage to Alan and early death in childbirth. “She died over 100 years ago, and she was only 34,” the girl says, curls bouncing with intensity. “I’ve always thought it’s sad when people get forgotten. I can’t explain it, but when I read the bits of information they had about her, I wished…I wished we could have known each other. And that she could have lived to see her children all grow up.” She pulls out a portrait of me at my wedding, auburn hair cascading around my shoulders. “This was in the records, and the librarian said I could take it, since no one’s asked for it in the while it’s been there. I’m going to keep going there, Mair.” 

And she does. Over the next 70 years, Amser visits my grave regularly. When she lives nearby, it’s every week. Later she moves to the city and comes monthly, always bringing wildflowers, always with a faint smile. I wonder about the rest of her life, but she must really not be blood family–the lake won’t let me see her anywhere but the cemetery. As I always have, I carry on, missing Alan but intrigued by this strange girl’s remembrance. One of my friends on the agricultural team visits often with her children, and I am an honorary aunt for the first time.

It’s the autumn equinox again when a messenger finds me in the fields again, this time working on an irrigation system for growing rice. 

“My lady Efa, your ship has arrived. It is time for you to leave Aros for the sea.” 

Amser! She must be here then! I want to meet her before I go, but swept up in the preparations for sailing, I forget to ask the messenger. Standing on the pier, my thoughts are a tangle as I think about all the people I knew and the adventure still ahead. I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to see gray eyes and bouncing dark hair. 

“Amser!” We are already friends. I embrace her and ask, “How did you find me so fast?” 

“I didn’t, really,” she says, her voice familiar and yet strangely clearer and deeper than it was through the lake. “I’m sailing, you see, and when I saw you…well, I felt sure it was the same woman in my picture. To think after all these years I get to meet you, Efa!” We laugh with delight, but something she said strikes me as odd. 

“You’re sailing already? But you must have just gotten here!” 

“Yes,” she says, “I am already forgotten. I had no family, you know, and all my friends have already gone. I got to see some of them on the way to the harbor, though. Mair has great-grandchildren now!” She says it without regret or envy in her voice, and I blink back tears. All this time, she’s been making sure I haven’t been forgotten, while she… 

“Why did you do it?” I hadn’t meant to ask the question, but it doesn’t bother Amser. 

“I wanted you to know someone remembered, still. And maybe…oh, I don’t know, it gave me someone to care about, in a way. I wanted to give you what I knew I wouldn’t have– time.” 

I think about the friends I made here after Alan left, the discoveries my team and I worked for, the children who had run screaming around my house playing pirates, and I knew it had been a good gift. 

“Well, may I give you something in return?” I pull out a whistle, whittled to look like the one Tarian made but painted bright yellow, with a carving of wildflowers and rosemary. We board the tall crystal-blue ship, its bows pointed toward the horizon. “If ever you’re becalmed, all you have to do is whistle for a wind.” The high notes rise on the air and the sails billow out, slipping out of Aros Harbor ti hwnt i’r mor, beyond the sea.

[youaretwicemine]

You ever start a 500 word one shot that turns into a 2.5K short story about love and loss and grief and the idea of a legacy? Yeah me neither

[youaretwicemine]

[youaretwicemine]

here have some slapdash late-night poetry

[youaretwicemine]

In one swift movement Noor pinned Ailah against the wall, gauntleted sword-arm slamming across thin brown collarbone, and choked, “Do YOU understand, sister?” The word twisted horribly against her teeth and she spat it out. “Have you gutted a man and watched his face when he realized he would never see his family again? And then turned and done it over and over, until your eyes see only carnage and every bone could crack with weariness? Have you left that field of death only to hear your praises sung in the streets, the price of every flower flung a mangled Ultian corpse? And when the only man you ever truly wanted to kill escaped capture, have you had vengeance for your brother’s life denied you? Ailah, my hands are not the hands of a healer. They are stained with blood and grasp at phantoms. Now go back to your weaving and forget you ever had an older sister.”

[youaretwicemine]

Thirst

You stand in the desert First time: I’m running away Second time: get rid of her

Woman of breaking. Seeking water (A spring, a skin) Seeking relief

You hear a voice First time: Hagar Second time: do not be afraid

Where have you come from, where are you going? Does anyone see?

Do you thirst enough to let me save you?

You stand in the desert Seen, heard, found Saved.

Why would you see someone like me?

You stand by the well Jew: will you give me a drink? Samaritan: how can you ask that?

Woman of questions. Seeking water (A jar, a well) Seeking relief

Do you know who just asked you for a drink? Where can you get this living water?

Do you thirst enough to let me save you?

You stand by the well Seen, heard, known Saved.

He told me everything I ever did.

Could this be the Christ? I have now seen the One who sees me.

[youaretwicemine]

I remember when The armor of queens encased you, Shining, titanium, a being of swords and sentences. Back then I wanted to love you but didn’t know how. I tried to care, clumsily, but always ran into your palms, Outstretched, holding my shoulders stiffly at arms’ length. It might as well have been miles. I remember when The armor of queens cracked, Chinks of light cascaded through. You became a person and not an idea, No longer a box or a far-away song, Increasingly more true. It was slow and deliberate, Like the leaves creeping back to the trees, Each day a little more green. You were a hero to a lonely child, You’re still a hero to a girl on a precipice. I think my ideas about heroes just changed. Heroes don’t need to wear perfect armor and make speeches and show off for crowds and slay the dragon and save the maiden all alone. Heroes wash dishes late at night so I can sleep. Heroes hear me crying and ask if I need someone to stay. Heroes see darkness and raise up a sword, singing, sunbeams seeping through the cracks in their broken armor. Heroes fail. And they get back up and try again, and they learn how to ask for help. Heroes rest, returning home after hard-won victory to firelight and song and sleep. Heroes are people who distribute hope, but hope is messy. Like drinking light, and you come away dripping with it. And suddenly there starts a thunderstorm of hope, and we wash our hair in the rain. Back then I thought perfection was prerequisite to love. Now I throw back my head in the downpour and we laugh at the sky together, and perfection rinses off my shoulder-blades and melts into the sidewalk. Love is no longer a transaction, just an action. The girl on the precipice loves you.

[youaretwicemine]

Of Summer I'll Sing

Of summer I’ll sing, and joyous is the song That mingles in the dusk with smoke and sparks Or stretches up to greet the skirting sunrise This quiet hour bleeds with fervent praise.

Warm work-filled days and chilly nights, Humble adventures come knocking at my door. No job’s a chore when no job is beneath you And so the song is lifted up while washing cars Or stacking wood, or patching up a scrape.

Of summer I’ll sing, and singing  Twines with cicadas in the evening air. I’ll sing of warmth, of crowded afternoons peopled with delight Of deep water, and the coolness of memory.

Knees sometimes bruised and bug bites bandaged over, Calloused fingers skipping over pages,  Braiding hair and making fires, The song humming from throats made sore by laughter.

I sing of forests still and yet alive The song twines round the trees  And swoops through daisy meadows  And leaps again up, up To fields where stars add harmony

The song goes on, it tells the tale Bright and lithe, winding on for ever “In every masterpiece is proof of hope, In all our joys the mark of He who made them.” 

And so I add my stumbling melody Unto the tune that turns and turns forever, My eyes behold each day of beauty fresh And cannot help but wonder at the glory.

So sing will I of summer, As long as song and summer still live on, And hope and laughter mingle with the dusk, And stars emerge to add their harmony. 

[youaretwicemine]

“She’ll try to kill you if you go back there.” “I know. She’ll probably succeed.” I stamped out the frantic thoughts dancing behind my eyes. No time to plan, can’t stop to contemplate. It had to be now. “Sami, I know you don’t want me to go. But I can’t let more people slip through the cracks because of me.” 

[youaretwicemine]

Re: mourning dove OC Zenaida? 👀

It was a short response to a prompt for the twitter group my writer friends admin! I don't have twitter, so I wrote it and one of my friends posted it. The prompt was "fuss and feathers" and I wrote a silly little 500-word snippet about birds. Here it is unedited if you're interested :)

Having finished an excellent breakfast of seeds and the occasional beetle, the female turtledove settled herself on a fencepost to digest while supervising her young brood. A tan flutter and a flash of a scarlet beak beside her, and Maria Cardinal chirped a chipper “Good morning, Zenaida!” The dove returned the greeting and settled herself for the inevitable gossip and banter that accompanied breakfast near the hen-yard. The best seeds were found here, true (for the farmhands were reckless at scattering seed for the chickens), but almost as palatable were the bits of news and gossip that circulated among the mother birds. Zenaida shifted her position with a ruffle of feathers and cooed, “And how are the young ones, Maria?” “Fledged, every one, and well on their way to leaving the nest,” said Maria proudly. “Yours?” “Most of them are still hanging about—you know they fledged about two weeks ago—but Bert took off the other day and we haven’t seen him since. I think he’ll turn back up eventually, but you never know with teenagers.” Despite Zenaida’s indifferent tone, she was more than a little upset at the desertion. “Goodness me!” Maria remarked coolly, “my nestlings would never think to leave without a proper goodbye!” “No, Maria dear, but then your husband would, so we must all remember perfection is impossible.” Zenaida’s voice was sweet as honey, but the thinly veiled dig at cardinal mating habits had struck a nerve. Before Maria could think of a thoroughly satisfactory reply, Elle Finch darted in to deliver news. “Oh Zenny dear, you’re just the girl I’ve been looking for!” she warbled. “My sister’s fledged daughter Margie was flying over Beckham’s Woods yesterday, and she said that her friend Em Jay saw your Bert with a female from out of state! Oh, isn’t it exciting? Rather young, both of them, but still! I just had to tell you!” Her warbling voice grated on Zenaida’s ears, as did Maria’s sly smile. “Wonderful indeed,” chirped the cardinal brightly, “the first fully fledged young one! You must be very proud, Zen.” “Of course I am. Bert is young, but he isn’t stupid. I wish him all the best, and you may tell your sister’s daughter’s friend to tell him that next time she snoops on business that isn’t her own.” Both the other birds looked rather embarrassed, and a palpable silence fell for the next few minutes. Then came another flutter—two flutters!—and suddenly there was Bert and a female dove with splendid glossy plumes. “Hello Mama!” Bert whistled cheerily. “This is Abby…she and I…we…well…” his explanation trailed off and was lost in Zenaida’s joyful exclamation. “Bless you both! Welcome to the family, Abby. I—we—are happy to meet you.” She called the rest of her brood over and, amid the cooing flurry of introductions and greetings, saw Maria and Elle flutter off in opposite directions. Later, back at the family nest, Bert asked, “Mama, what were those two old gals saying when we flew up? I hope we didn’t interrupt anything—you all looked positively miserable!” “It was nothing, Bert dear,” his mother smiled, “just the same old fuss and feathers.”

[youaretwicemine]

Fade?

They tell you “if you love it let it go.” What they don’t say is it hurts to do the letting Like eyes that strain too far to see, like knuckles Stained with blood from knives that saw but do not sever.

“Let go!” I cry; my mind would have it so, I find it is my heart that falters, fearing I’ve lost so much already- can I bear To lose again? When will I find? Never?

I cannot save you, can’t protect, can’t know The pain inside you is not mine; that hurts Far more than bearing double pain, this truth: I am not the fixer of things broken. Forever

My heart cries, “why?” I feel the silence grow, Resounding round about me. Answer! The silence shakes the world and still I wait! Alone. Alone, for answers. Will you speak? Ever?

I fear I have been foolish, I’ve been slow To learn, and fear’s like fire, hard to quench. The monster’s of my making, the giant I formed in my own mind and can’t dismember.

And still I wait, and still the silence folds, Turning on silent hinges, flying swiftly south. And I’ll be right here where you left me Waiting. For what, I can’t remember.

[youaretwicemine]

It’s Zaki! This is sort of an experiment to see if I actually write things I want to share with people.