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kiyakotari
Written in response to the Week #22 challenge/prompt on Resinality's ABJD Writing usergroup. Prompt was Michael Langley's poem, "Rune" (shown below). A bit late in posting it, sorry. I'm behind in transferring things from other places to here, so expect to see quite a bit of writing from me over the next week or so.
Poems in the palm of the hand, life-line,
Fingers tapping the ridge of the shin-bone,
The bridge of the nose, fingerprints, breath;
Then the silvery skin of the lifeless,
Ivy increasing the secrets, the answers--
The physician's power in cold dwellings,
Candles behind this veil of synonyms,
A blind man's lovely wife and signature.
Hideo would never admit it, but sometimes she found herself looking at Aiko with something that could only be called jealousy. Oh, the other woman hadn’t had a perfect life – not by far, even if her trials had been different than Hideo’s. And it didn’t change at all the way Hideo felt about her – or at least, Hideo didn’t think it did. Her chest still tightened when Aiko smiled at her in a certain way, and the taste of Aiko’s palm under her lips, the feel of her own teeth scraping lightly along the curve of Aiko’s shoulder, still sent shivers chasing down her spine and tingling under her skin. But there was certainly jealousy there.
She envied Aiko’s knowledge.
Hideo could read, slowly, if she concentrated. In a world where digital information systems had all but replaced print books years ago, literacy was becoming less and less crucial to success in life. Because of that, Hideo’s lack of early education didn’t make her grossly under the norm, and one of the first things she’d done after breaking out of the lab with Daiichi was start teaching herself to read. But it would never come easily, the words would never simply flow off the page and into her mind like they did for Aiko. And unlike Aiko, her comprehension was limited to English and a few of the more common characters of Japanese and Chinese. Things she saw on signs all the time: Don’t Enter, Bathrooms, Police, Coca-Cola.
Hideo knew how to read people, knew how to walk into a bar or up a street and tell at a glance who was dangerous, who was foreign, who was lost, who was uncomfortable, harmless, angry, hungry, sad. She knew how to organize a group of varied individuals from different backgrounds into a coherent whole, working toward a common goal. She knew how to use a gun – up to six at one time – and she knew how to use computers. Everyone knew how to use computers, nowadays. She wasn’t stupid. Her vocabulary was certainly large enough – Aiko rarely used terms Hideo couldn’t understand. And Aiko used terms a lot of people couldn’t understand.
But Aiko could kiss her way up one of Hideo’s arms, smiling gently, nibbling at the inside of her wrist and the tip of her finger, and then comment without even having to think about it that Hideo needed more calcium in her diet. And when Hideo blinked and asked what the hell Aiko was talking about, she’d reply offhandedly that it was because of the shape of her damned fingernails. Hideo could wonder out loud, watching a flock of endangered geese going by overheard, why they always flew in that weird V shape. And Aiko would explain three different theories that could explain the behavior, citing wind resistance and aerodynamics, before ending with “But no one really knows for sure.” Or she’d walk into the library and find Aiko sitting in one of the reading rooms, a stack of books next to her. Hideo would sit down, and look at the spines of the books, and the titles would be in Latin and Chinese, Korean, Russian, in other languages she couldn’t even identify.
Hideo was happy with her life, and with the way she lived it. But there were times, watching Aiko doing things, watching Aiko think, watching Aiko use that knowledge packed into her brain and not even realize that there was anything unusual in reading and writing and speaking like she did, and she would be jealous.
Then Aiko would look at her, mouth curved in that little half smile, and without even asking she would explain the meaning of a character on a sign as they passed it, or the reason a flower pushing up through a crack in the sidewalk grew the way it did. Aiko would unlock another door for her, give Hideo the gift of another little piece of the big puzzle, and Hideo would forget she had ever been jealous, and simply love her.
Poems in the palm of the hand, life-line,
Fingers tapping the ridge of the shin-bone,
The bridge of the nose, fingerprints, breath;
Then the silvery skin of the lifeless,
Ivy increasing the secrets, the answers--
The physician's power in cold dwellings,
Candles behind this veil of synonyms,
A blind man's lovely wife and signature.
Jealousy
Hideo would never admit it, but sometimes she found herself looking at Aiko with something that could only be called jealousy. Oh, the other woman hadn’t had a perfect life – not by far, even if her trials had been different than Hideo’s. And it didn’t change at all the way Hideo felt about her – or at least, Hideo didn’t think it did. Her chest still tightened when Aiko smiled at her in a certain way, and the taste of Aiko’s palm under her lips, the feel of her own teeth scraping lightly along the curve of Aiko’s shoulder, still sent shivers chasing down her spine and tingling under her skin. But there was certainly jealousy there.
She envied Aiko’s knowledge.
Hideo could read, slowly, if she concentrated. In a world where digital information systems had all but replaced print books years ago, literacy was becoming less and less crucial to success in life. Because of that, Hideo’s lack of early education didn’t make her grossly under the norm, and one of the first things she’d done after breaking out of the lab with Daiichi was start teaching herself to read. But it would never come easily, the words would never simply flow off the page and into her mind like they did for Aiko. And unlike Aiko, her comprehension was limited to English and a few of the more common characters of Japanese and Chinese. Things she saw on signs all the time: Don’t Enter, Bathrooms, Police, Coca-Cola.
Hideo knew how to read people, knew how to walk into a bar or up a street and tell at a glance who was dangerous, who was foreign, who was lost, who was uncomfortable, harmless, angry, hungry, sad. She knew how to organize a group of varied individuals from different backgrounds into a coherent whole, working toward a common goal. She knew how to use a gun – up to six at one time – and she knew how to use computers. Everyone knew how to use computers, nowadays. She wasn’t stupid. Her vocabulary was certainly large enough – Aiko rarely used terms Hideo couldn’t understand. And Aiko used terms a lot of people couldn’t understand.
But Aiko could kiss her way up one of Hideo’s arms, smiling gently, nibbling at the inside of her wrist and the tip of her finger, and then comment without even having to think about it that Hideo needed more calcium in her diet. And when Hideo blinked and asked what the hell Aiko was talking about, she’d reply offhandedly that it was because of the shape of her damned fingernails. Hideo could wonder out loud, watching a flock of endangered geese going by overheard, why they always flew in that weird V shape. And Aiko would explain three different theories that could explain the behavior, citing wind resistance and aerodynamics, before ending with “But no one really knows for sure.” Or she’d walk into the library and find Aiko sitting in one of the reading rooms, a stack of books next to her. Hideo would sit down, and look at the spines of the books, and the titles would be in Latin and Chinese, Korean, Russian, in other languages she couldn’t even identify.
Hideo was happy with her life, and with the way she lived it. But there were times, watching Aiko doing things, watching Aiko think, watching Aiko use that knowledge packed into her brain and not even realize that there was anything unusual in reading and writing and speaking like she did, and she would be jealous.
Then Aiko would look at her, mouth curved in that little half smile, and without even asking she would explain the meaning of a character on a sign as they passed it, or the reason a flower pushing up through a crack in the sidewalk grew the way it did. Aiko would unlock another door for her, give Hideo the gift of another little piece of the big puzzle, and Hideo would forget she had ever been jealous, and simply love her.
