MELITA
Father’s tempers and noses, mother’s rebellious hearts; and the girl received ferocity and sweetness, an interchanging, colossal balance between vehemence and compassion. Sometimes they were blinding and overwhelming, sometimes they were scattered and torn, sometimes she didn’t know what she was or how she walked along this earth. But she tried, and that was more than lingering along the thresholds of nothingness, despondent and rejected, curled away from everything else, waiting for the next set of plagues to be set upon her. Did Gaal try? Did he ever care? Or was it all too much or never enough, a haunting correspondence of upheaval and greed? How many other women became entangled, enraptured, and then left with naught? Or with children – unwanted, mistakes born of avarice, inattention, or simply utter indifference? Her eyes watched his, waiting for the infinite details, starting to complete a picture of Gaal, of Graasvoel, of a figure larger than life, but lacking a majority of its virtues – no paragon sanctioned in his threshold, no statue built in his honor.Entitled was the first sentence, feeling better about himself in pity party antics, coaxing more women into his bed (so Melita and Clementine could be one of many, flickering embers, coals, and ashes scattered all over kingdoms and worlds), always fighting, always enduring. It wasn’t so much different from the Rift, perhaps, except she couldn’t fathom or understand when anyone would find the time to entice and inveigle another into anything, when they were all just managing to survive.
And Sunjata’s story was harder? She tilted her head, rounded her shoulders, fingers flexing across the bridge, then pommel of her staff; her other hand drifting along the surface of the water, curling and coiling into the river. But he didn’t go into it, didn’t provide those details. Maybe he didn’t want to tell – his to own, his to covet – so her mouth failed to form the adequate inquiry, delving more into the hate, the malice, the rancor behind the other man’s abhorrence.
Arranged marriages: and she wondered if either party was ever content, happy, with them. His sister smitten, incapable of seeing the path she lingered upon, the man she wanted but couldn’t quite ever truly grasp. Was he swayed too much by others, by ravenous, rapacious edges? And did that scare her a little, when she was the same way about violence, about vehemence, about vitriol, insatiable when battles waged? “What did you do?” Couldn’t let that happen, had to protect his sibling; and she could understand, comprehend those layers. She’d done for as long as she could, until she finally wasn’t enough.
A sad, wistful smile lingered on her lips at the apology. “Not much I can do about it,” she murmured, a dulcet laugh billowing from her chest. Her voice threatened to be swallowed by the wind, by the breeze, but she let it hang there, a cluster of supposes. “Was there anything good about him?” Fangorn uttered a rasp on the shoreline, poking at rocks, while she shrugged, while he proffered more. Melita wasn’t sure she deserved anything else – not after these trials and tribulations, these revelations scorching her skin.
But the gift was far too tempting.
Her smile bloomed into an impish grin, head raised, figure rising onto her knees, a very devil-may-care platitude simmering its way over her sights. It was a true restoration of what she was, underneath the sorrow, the anguish, the melancholy, and the trappings; heart suddenly soaring at the notion of mischievous ambitions. “Yes please!”
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Give the bruises out like gifts
