Melita
they should have checked the ashes
of the women they burned alive
of the women they burned alive
She waited and waited for the hollowed-out judgement, for the scorn, for the malice, for the weight of her father’s sins to somehow extend to her. Maybe Saartjie could see every ounce of Gaal’s blood in her – the vile, the repugnant, the bastard who sired bastards. Maybe the tales were all true. Maybe she was the spitting image of the deplorable behemoth; who’d once stared upon his daughters and refused to call them his own. Maybe she was just as ashamed of the honeybee. The restless notions clung to her skin and flung around in her brain, a thousand, flickering embers, and she couldn’t find one to properly stoke, fan, and flame. Inside those walls, they were all brought to life, and every ember found their way to mark, to burn.
The words that came thereafter, not damning, not persecuting, not demeaning, floored her – kept her rooted and still, beyond her widened eyes. Her arms became straight and taut at her sides, her breathing finite, the world a whisper, a mile away, but still managing to thunder in her ears. She swallowed something down – surprise, maybe bile, shock, expecting everything to collapse across her heart, and instead there was only warmth.
Comfort. Stepping forward, a woman’s gentle hand lifting her chin, and suddenly Melita remembered her mother doing the very same to each of her girls, after they’d whirled around, after they’d fallen down, after they’d forgotten how to pick themselves up again. “Thank you,” she whispered, dumbstruck and dumbfounded, not even remotely feral or wild in that moment – but suddenly very much a youth who had lost many, many things, moments, and instances in her short life. “He didn’t want us,” she offered into the air – hushed, as if that said enough. “What happened to him? How did you get away?” After, after, after?
The words that came thereafter, not damning, not persecuting, not demeaning, floored her – kept her rooted and still, beyond her widened eyes. Her arms became straight and taut at her sides, her breathing finite, the world a whisper, a mile away, but still managing to thunder in her ears. She swallowed something down – surprise, maybe bile, shock, expecting everything to collapse across her heart, and instead there was only warmth.
Comfort. Stepping forward, a woman’s gentle hand lifting her chin, and suddenly Melita remembered her mother doing the very same to each of her girls, after they’d whirled around, after they’d fallen down, after they’d forgotten how to pick themselves up again. “Thank you,” she whispered, dumbstruck and dumbfounded, not even remotely feral or wild in that moment – but suddenly very much a youth who had lost many, many things, moments, and instances in her short life. “He didn’t want us,” she offered into the air – hushed, as if that said enough. “What happened to him? How did you get away?” After, after, after?
because it takes a single wild ember
to bring a whole wildfire to life
to bring a whole wildfire to life
