carlita

To begin with I have to be on here, I'm doing skoolwork for smartmaking so hush. I'm taking a break before my head falls off.

With the smartmaking. Gah.

Still sick. Got very much rained on . . . probably not good for the sickness. Went to my mandatory attendance poetry workshop this morning in fever . . . that was interesting. Luckily, my group did my poems today; I should have asked them to wait and do them next week, but I was so out of it that I didn't even think about it. Oh well. They really liked them, although I did one about SI that no one got until I explained it . . . I had two people beta, but both of them also SI and I guess that it's kind of a biased thing and I wasn't thinking clearly . . . my fault. Clearly. But they liked them anyway.

On that note, I was working on a prompt earlier -- my journals are due on my end-of-the-year, one-on-one-with-my-teacher-critique on December 1st -- and it got away from me and somehow became fanfiction -- this is what happens when you write during a fever and between bouts of watching Buffy for hours and hours (I'm sick! I can watch as much Buffy as I like!) -- so I'm trashing it and posting it here, instead, where maybe someone will appreciate it. Bah, humbug.


   Reciprocity

   He has a grace
   Just a hair from human
   You could call him Angel or Ghost
   And either would fit.
   He has a mouth built for apologies,
   Or for prayer—
   Rounded down under the great weight
   Of “I’m so sorry,” or
   “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

   She knows in watching him
   In the anguished way he machinates,
   That he’s damaged by things
   She cannot understand.
   She wonders if it’s enough
   That she recognizes that
   She cannot understand.

   “Confucius,” he says,
   His voice startling in its balance of strength
   And sensuality. “Was once asked to name one character
   That described all wisdom, all law.”

   She crawls over to him. “I don’t understand that.”
   He knows what she means. He always knows.

   “In Chinese script, they don’t have letters;
   Instead, they use pictures that mean a whole word.”

   “Oh,” she says. “What did he say?”

   He opens his hands with the word. “Reciprocity.”

   “Why are you telling me this?” But she knows.
   They are a constant ebb and flow, a mirror reflection.
   He can’t stay away from her,
   And he just says the things
   She doesn’t know how to put into words.

   “Love’s like that,” he says anyway.
   Even though
   He knows she knows.
   “Reciprocity. And it’s the least
   Law- and wisdom-governed thing
   That I can think of.”

   She closes the distance between them,
   Lets her mouth fall against his
   Like an act of gravity.
   Easy. Muscle memory. All instinct.
   She feels at home here,
   And he’s not half bad either.

   “You think too much,” she murmurs.