Cauldron Anthology Issue 9: They Who Were Spurned cauldron9finalproof | Page 24

This is No Time For Silence, or Summoning Someone Who Knows Better
Kayla K ing
You need not make my choice,
yet it is the choosing you shall have.
If only you call upon promises
too, she would say, and so you
never broach the subject.
This world is a heavy thing to carry
between hips. Even small, the susurrus
of something better begs you to think
made in text, to bind back the oath
signed into Law, now broken
by men. It is but a bitter truth.
Yes, men have always had the power
to burn words. And women. Of this be sure:
no small thing will persuade them
against their gods. Not even your heartbeat
can defend against a single thrum
in the ether. Think back.
Sweet syrup sugars suffocate
as peaches bake. Tarts and jams,
dumplings and fritters, all the fine
ruination. It’s what their kind do,
those men who’ve lived over
and over, in my lifetime, and yours.
They’ll tell you to focus on the heartbeat,
because how could you not love the crest
of ocean waves? The secret: don’t count
the way you would between thunder.
One and two and three and—
Remember to remain whole without
delicacies worked to perfection
from your mother’s hands.
She tried then to fill you
having to stretch the seam between you
and another. Call on me now
so I might tell you about the weight
with it all. Too much remains empty,
she said, glancing
down.
of a life in your arms,
those silent stories from small lips,
lily soft. I’ll remind you mine are gone,
And now.
And
now
it feels too much to ask that she abandon
the fruit on the porch and let it rot,
because that would be wasteful.
An empty woman wastes much,
about leaving this all
behind. They cannot take
the thoughts, despite boasting
and the memory of their words
smell only of char,
of asphodel.
Ask me. It is what they all wonder
when word of my wretched weakness
wields war on the minds of men.
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Cauldron Anthology