Spoken To
Drawing In and Deprivation
Lace and traces of foil the size of your fist; Caesar’s spices and those made hand-ground underground: On these nights I find myself the victim of my own fruitless pleasures and taste buds lie dormant, whispering: ever over the bridge of metal and test our mettle before biting. The bite is the thing that made dents in tin indented inside our locked tent. There the shadows of us are without, within the hearts they change their parts littering out their glitter like pasteless poison. How the rich practitioners of history, makers of their stories, tell down the centuries and flatten to paper a small hand that canned their meals. Mark the hours gone at the twisting time and twine your hand with mine at the worst of it; no curse can trace its spaces on our skin so long’s the dawn’s drawing in is caught in our saffron curtain and us behind it. How many tastes there are still to revel in! And certainly how many beveled edges we have to brush the dust away on and cut our teeth. See the gleaming of it. Glean all I’m saying. Swaying outside in the hard bark of the branches and left our leaves for later are the ears taking all this in and categorizing our sins, remembered for the chopping and making of our door. Along the floor the shadows beneath it grow long and don’t worry, the woodgrain will remember, but isn’t it December yet and long past time we built ourselves some damp close camp against the guilt and the forever.
Rebecca Ann Jordan is a speculative fiction author, artist, and editor. Her stories and poems have been published in Strange Horizons, Flapperhouse, Fiction Vortex, Strangelet, and more. In 2015 Becca participated in the Clarion Writer’s Workshop and holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2016. While Becca first sprung from the earth near the San Diego area, she now sells weird and wonderful books in the mountain town of Durango, Colorado. See more at rebeccaannjordan.com or follow her @beccaquibbles.