They don’t count on the Underthing, but nobody ever does, so that’s all right, then. Continue reading
Late
29 Wednesday Jul 2020
Posted Fiction, YeahWrite Prompts
in29 Wednesday Jul 2020
Posted Fiction, YeahWrite Prompts
inThey don’t count on the Underthing, but nobody ever does, so that’s all right, then. Continue reading
08 Wednesday Jul 2020
Posted Fiction, Writing, YeahWrite Prompts
inIt was one of the statues they had put up later, After, after the Before that only my grandmother ever spoke of. Before, a statue of Justice would have stood tall, blindfolded but proud, weighing truth in her scales. But After, we understood more about who Justice was: depicted her covering her eyes, weeping, broken-scaled and curve-backed.
They named me for her, even though Pai said it was an ill-omened name.
I used to go down to the back field before Service, before the Reading of Law, when I was only little, and watch the statue. Had she moved? Had she wept? Was it rain or her tears?
Later, when I was older, we’d slip away to the back field, lie in the shadow of Justice and watch the ragged clouds. Before, people used to think there were pictures in the clouds, or omens, or even chemicals, to make you mad and force you to think like the rulers wanted you to.
She never spoke to me, Justice, not when I was little and not thereafter, stealing kisses between her mossy knees and watching the fenceline nervously. We weren’t supposed to go to the back fields, but everyone did. It was like a rite of passage: touch the barbed wire, feel the smoothness of the posts that teenagers had touched before, year on year. Way carved our names together there, running out of room for mine so it said Just. They called me that then, Just. It made me feel almost-enough. Like I was just something.
I could still see it there, my truncated name, when they came to take us. The fence lay in the track-churned grass, the smooth posts shattered.
Justice refused to watch, face in her hands, so I didn’t watch her vanishing behind me.
06 Monday Jul 2020
Posted Fiction, Microstory, YeahWrite Prompts
in02 Thursday Jul 2020
Posted Poetry
inTags
In 1989 I was old enough to remember
but not to understand
the day they interrupted our cartoons
to show one man standing
on flagstones
five thousand, six hundred forty-six miles away from my eyes
Information travels at the speed of thought now
we don’t have to wait months
to see a flower in the barrel of a gun
to see a man standing
and then gone
and a tank where he stood
Thought doesn’t travel as fast as information
The flower is in her hand
The tank is advancing
A line of young people holds umbrellas
We can count the seconds between the chokehold
and i can’t breathe
between the closed door and the rough ride
between the open window and the bullet in the back
And we’re still too slow
not the hand that holds the flower, nor the one that holds the gun
not the man in front of the tank nor the foot on the pedal
In 1989 there were four people in the square:
The man
the tank
the driver
the flagstones
There was no-one else to be.