Rhyme

I was feeling blue. Melancholy had a hold on me something fierce. Now when that fit gets all up in my space I usually can be found by the stream. Any stream really .. water cools the fire of my soul and body. The sound of it running and tripping on the rocks does my heart good .. it does not take the sadness away .. in fact it gives it music. A twangy sort of free rhythm that dances over the tops of the grass like a zarlit lights easy on the surface of the water. Like being a little drunk .. a little tired .. a little sad ... missing someone awful .. but the memory is sweet enough you do not try to forget too hard. You just roll it all together and .. smoke it.

Not that I was thinking all that while I sat beside the stream with my little bone flute I keep trying to master. In fact .. what was on my thoughts was my mother. I wanted a sweet memory so I could miss her better. Something .. anything ... to make it hurt worse and less at the same time. What was she like? Did she love me? Did she want me? I wished I could tell her I was sorry.

I wish I had known her .. just a little ... just enough to call her momma .. instead of mother. So she was not just the woman who held me for nine months .. all cradled safe in her belly. But who she was without me .. something that was about her. Just her. Something feminine .. and beautiful ... and right.

All this talk of Haruspex .. and seeing and speaking to the dead has brought a lot of things up in my head. Like .. what if? What if I could? I feel everything inside of me get tight and shaky. But I do not do that. I do not go there. But what if I could just see her? Once? Have a memory of what she looked like .. forever.

So with all those blue thoughts and the melancholy fit I was grooving in I was making better rhythm on my thigh with that flute than I was making any kind of melody like most people do with that particular instrument.

Now along came T'zuri and she was sporting a mirrored reflection that had her all limp in the corners like wet paper. And that got us just talking a little and sharing stuff .. except I was having an awful time trying to just talk to her. So I told her so.

I felt like we had all this .. stuff ... between us that was unresolved. And it was eating at me and chewing on my more tender parts. I told her I was sorry for talking a lot of shit .. stuff just milling around in my head and I figured I got her all confused. That I wanted to know who T'zuri was. Without her and me getting T'zuri all confused with other things. What kind of skin she found herself in .. how it felt and looked and what her dreams and desires were .. based on that skin.

She said she did not see the line I saw. I said to me it was pretty big. I asked her what she wanted from me. She said she wanted me to love her.

Great.

I told her .. I was not sure I knew how. She wanted to know if that meant I did not know how to love her because she had not chosen a side of the line. Now I was honest with her when I told her that ... did not matter what side of the line she found herself on ... I still did not know how to love.

I needed her to define herself for me. She offered me love .. but what kind of love. What did it look like .. how did it act. How did it present itself? How did it ask to be noticed?

We talked .. but not much came from it other than .. exasperation and desire to tear her to shreds .. limb from limb.

I demanded to know yet again what she wanted from me. She wanted me to love her. I told her I could not yet. I was not sure if I ever could. So what in the mean time? What about today? Tomorrow? I demanded she be responsible with her love. To stop fucking around with me. She denied that she was .. that she was as tortured with thoughts as I .. and her mother ....

Her mother. Ah fuck. I felt like I had been caught with my hands in the honey jar ... both of them.

But then she she got it. She finally realized what I wanted to know. She told me all the things she wanted. And the pictures she painted with her words were beautiful and good and right. Everything else faded away. It all started to make sense to me then. No more insanity and jumbled up mess. She soothed the savage beast that writhed and snarled for the uncertainty of it all ... she eased the fevered edges of indecision with a real vision I could wrap my thoughts around and hang onto.

And somewhere in there .. she stripped and submitted to me and ... this time I did not say no. This time it was all in a metered rhyme that held all the right syllables and went by all the rules and I understood it too.