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Laughter as the wind dances with the chimes is something, and a girl running through the forest connected to her family's crop garden is something else. there are ropes in her hand and she collects the frogs she sees in a pail then she weighs them with a hand, and writes it down. and then she runs again, losing her hair tie
her braids unravel and whip freely. and she gets stuck in branches and trees and twice by birds who she helps by tearing pieces off for their nests. then she reaches her treehouse and scrambles up to it
her brother's waiting, he takes her pail and helps clean up. while she goes makes the map of the forest bigger. with a lump she calls her tool she makes and makes and makes, and her brother smiles. she makes and knows and he cleans so she can learn
seven different knots to the twenty she already knows. the calculations needed to build and create and codes to spread it all. red flowers he gets for her hair and his own and they match as they dance. and the awards she wins every year three times because she's clever and a sneak
he makes them clothes out of their father's discarded leather and they sneak into alleys
into bars and parties and they drink and laugh and stumble home, hugging each other under a thick sheet. She's so much, he thinks. in her she holds their universe. she's unlimited and growing and ever ever ever expanding like the theories she tells him about and next morning he goes to the well to fetch water and comes back to
his mother pressing a pillow to her face and he screams and tears her off but she's gone. they're running from war but can't afford two children so they chose him
but they didn't
he goes to the forest, to the creek by the treehouse, falling asleep face down. and in a blink of an eye, in no effort expended, through fingers like sand or sea. two universes lived and died and no one knew their stories.
-Lusar Kagutsuchi Loyard for Ea Rokola Loyard
Unpublished work
Verbal