by catch » Fri Jul 05, 2013 8:54 am
She was a sour-smell rock, warm from a day's burning sun. She was the belly of a beast, a beast bound in oak-ship lumber, hot and dark, cradling a shoulder, a body, while he listened to the ocean beasts that followed, and sang their questions, why are you here; why are you here? you should be in forests, not seas, not deserts. I belong, I belong, he had tried to say; the forests are my hair, the deserts are my feet, my veins run with oceans, oceans, and an iron-wrought club had ended that, but not before precious cargo had spasmed and screamed and died.
She was a strange, wonderful comfort, and he listened to the way her ribs buzzed with air, air to force into a throat, and from there, to brains and lips to form the words. He snuffled back his own tears - men do not cry - his own mucus, cold, now that it had bubbled outside his nose, a fresh and phlegmy shock that caused a cough, a sputter, one and two and no more, no more, for he is afraid of snapping Gloria in half, so tangled he was with her.
"I am not afraid," he says, with the boldness of drink, spinning that lie. He had been angry, first, and then he had feared. He felt no regret, but he had felt shame. "I - I am not afraid. I am angry, and, and I will smash all the windows, and I will - i will smash my fist against Rhaena's cheek, and tell her, tell her t-t-to bring - to bring -"
To bring them all back.
she stood before him, her thick hair
thrown back, strands
caressing her milk-fat breasts,
the curve of her belly
bare under bronze skin.
he laughed, giddy with
black roses
black roses
hidden in food.
'You are not a child,' he tells her,
seized by the humor of his own
jest. for only children went about
without their clothes.
she smiled at him, her eyes
glimmering with a madness.
she touched his arm, and brought it
a work-hard hand, wrought in silver
to her belly.
'Do you know what this is,' she said,
'This is your child, Ka'tch,'
his name a clumsy rattle within
crusty Jerno-words.
'But I never had you. I never had you.
I want you, now.'
and she kissed him, a thick, wanting kiss
in the pit of his neck.
and he did not understand. even then.
so that she, with need, guided his hands
and drew him down to her
to add what was needed to black roses
to make the black milk.
No kisses. No kisses. But her lips were cool on a hot head, on a scar and tin stars. She was a heat against him, a Jerno-heat, a memory and a smell. As he had been taught, and without thinking, he would turn his lips to her, to kiss her, in the pit of her neck, meaning nothing more than a thank you, thank you.
"I'll smash all the windows to bits. Th-th-then, they'll remember."