Kharmer
We hold a secret.
Deep beneath the streets of Paris we convene, disbanding only once we've had our fill. Past the catacombs and to the right; worry not, there are those among us who know the way.
We were found once, by a bumbling policeman with extraordinary luck. We evacuated that night; each of us swept up in a haze of bafflement.
Our new home will not be so easily found, our lair of serenity not so easily penetrated. This time we will move before you come, popcorn kernels and candy wrappers the only evidence left behind. And a note.
Do not try to find us.
Winter is here.
Sweaters and snow, hot chocolate and fires; it brings us together. The brisk walks through the forest bring smiles to our faces and pink to our cheeks. We bury our noses into the scarves around our necks as we toss packed snow at each other, giggling at how childish we've become. We stop, but only because we can no longer feel our fingers, and pull them up to our foggy breath, hoping the heat will revive them. When that doesn't work, we join them, stealing the heat from one another.
We hold onto each other as we head back inside knowing our hands may be cold, buried beneath layers of wool and fleece, but our hearts are warm and full of love.
I love how his hair tangles in my hands, how the curls mold to the shape of my fingers even after they return to my sides.
When I wake up, he's the first thing I see.
And the only thing don't want to look away from.
There is a piano in the old house next door.
I went into the house once. Everything was covered in cobwebs and dusty white sheets. The piano played happier tunes while I was there, different from the slow and mesmerizing tunes I hear from my open window in the night.
Strange though; that the keys move even though no one sits at the bench.
It’s on again. The old radio we brought down from the attic, the one grandpa used to have in his house; it’s turned itself on again. The same smooth, sonorous voice oozes from its speaker and we are bound to listen.
Fate, they call me and my sisters, for we wind the thread that binds their short lives together.
My sisters cut and spin, but I measure. I measure time and happiness and heartbreak; nothing passes without my knowledge.
You may think to defeat death or cheat time, but I measure the seconds that pass in your life.
And your time is up.
They exist, I tell you. Go on, have a laugh. Roll your eyes and snort in derision, nudge your buddy and share knowing looks. Say I've gone mad, that I’m off my meds.
Well, that part may be true.
But I know what I saw.
Somewhere, hidden in the darkest part of the ocean tide, they dart through the water with fins more powerful than our own two legs.
You laugh now, but I’ll show you.
One day.
The water had gone. A new generation has grown up and left this world altogether; the ones alive now had never known the beauty of the ocean’s shore, or the feel of salty sea spray on their skin. They had never played with the waves at the water’s edge, tempting fate and wetting their sand-filled shoes.
But they listened.
The children grew up on such stories, told to them by their parents and the elders of the city. Through them they learned of the Ocean, and of lakes and rivers and streams; of water that fell from the sky in torrents, that it once pooled in the city streets where the children used to play.
And they knew.
They knew that even as they survived in the desert wasteland they called home, alongside the ever-burning Sun and the sand that clung to your skin; they knew that while the people of the desert had learned how to survive, they no longer knew how to live.
The water had gone. A new generation has grown up and left this world altogether, the ones alive now never knew the beauty of the seashore.
writing since 2013 · 9 entries · 8 days shown up
each square is a day—lit means Kendra showed up.
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the words Kendra reaches for
waternowoceanmeasurehousegenerationgrownaltogetheronesalivebeautyskinplayedfatesandchildren