Just this Once: drizzly remix
causeiambetta vs. the challenger
thubar2000
the dark sky drizzles
upon a small figure
climbing the steep path to the
schoolhouse.
she cradles a bundle:
linens and medicines
(that cannot soothe her wounds),
needles and sutures
(that cannot close the cuts within),
kept preciously clean from the
smoke-laden storm.
the grungy girl crests the hill.
a sudden gust lashes
the thin back she offers to the chill
wind.
tremors seize her and subside;
her chin reflexively rises
as her eyelids flicker
and Konoha appears,
doll-sized and deathly still.
from a hundred paces high,
home is not a burnt husk
and she is not a refugee huddled in the
rain,
but a child, warm and dry,
(broad browed and mane-proud)
sighing over the comely boy,
who almost looked her way.
a gritty droplet invades her eye,
washing away the mirage.
Konoha reappears,
pox-ravaged and hushed.
dreaming of daydreams
only reminds her of the icy void
locked within her ribcage,
a standing whirlpool insatiably
swallowing ships.
just days before,
that comely boy with dark hair,
burnt her with his stare
blazing with ambition and wild abandon,
as he
laid to waste
all that was unneeded for his
vengeance:
their homeland,
the places they had shared,
and the space she reserved next to her
heart,
leaving her with fine ashes
being washed away by fat droplets from
the sky.
Just this once,
she wants to let the tears flow
unstintingly
to dissolve
her bittersweet memories
her sight, touch, and scent,
and her flimsy dreams,
and flush them down the depthless
drain,
leaving a Sakura-shaped husk,
to fall like thin egg shells
and be discarded at the roadside
to mercy of the relentless rain.
indulging her hollowness,
her arms grow lax and
the package slides toward the ground.
cursing,
she snags the bundle before it spills
the morning's salvage to the filth
below.
her broken fingertips,
the soot caked on her body,
and the deep scratches along her limbs
are rewards for rooting through the
wreckage,
and remind her of the makeshift ward
over the next hill.
angry,
the girl bites her teeth together
until a red bead wells at her lips,
because she is big now
and should know that, though, she is
wet,
she cannot drown in the rain.
the little woman wipes her mouth
with a clenched hand,
smearing black across her cheek, and
presses her naked face against the
wind,
bearing a burden for the injured,
and she is secretly glad for the storm
that weeps when she cannot.