This week’s word is sushi brought to you by Heather Beth. I asked her to give me a random word and this is what she spit out. And to think, a couple of months ago she hated sushi… I’ve created a monster. Lol. Really I’ve just created a sushi buddy & I couldn’t be happier about it!! 🙂 I wanted to try something new this week and not be as literal as I was last week. Instead I created a little short “story” and a poem. The first actually uses the word and the second just invokes the feeling of sushi: the wrapping, the intricate display, the consumption, etc.
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Renaissance
A letter to a lover that needs no stamp.
It has been ages since you severed my heart from my body, since the fabric of my world was rent by your erstwhile loving hands. Still I grieve, still I hope, still I ache. And I ask you why. Today I have answered my own inquiry. You were unneeded in this most primal of discoveries. Your voice was obsolete. Your reassurance was not required. Every answer I needed lay locked in the wounded fist at my side.
You took the pieces of my soul and wrapped them up as neatly as an Itamae assembles sushi: the largest part of my heart, the majority of my mind, all of my will wrapped tightly in a raw chunk of that secret place that each woman holds sacred and apart from her lover, freshly and savagely sliced. Even my secret became just a part of the plunder you stole from me. You stole it from me and laughed, with no intention to ever relinquish your bounty.
Until this day, I had not dared to reach out to you, to regain a hold on the rolled up bundle that was my life. I could not extend my hand to you because I feared my own grasp. I knew I would reach for my soul and instead brush your hand, glimpse your smile and I would clutch onto everything you are. Everything I was. All that we were and could have been.
As I said, until this day.
Today, I extend my shaking, still-wounded open hand and reach past the pain. Past the fear, longing, loathing; past the empty promises of your touch, the lure of your breath on my skin, the undercover-parasitic balm of your words in my ear. I reach all the way into your soul and reclaim what has been mine all along. My heart is mine. My soul is mine. And damnitall, my life is mine. And while I may remember the way your fingers skimmed my skin in the moonlight, how your eyes raked hot and feral over the soft curve of my thighs and your hair fell across the swell of my breast as you lay listening for the silent heartbeat in my broken womb, I will no longer allow that to break the shakily reconstructed wall of my secret stronghold.
I have gathered around my crushed spirit all the materials I need to recreate myself stronger and more whole that ever I was before. I assemble them, call upon all their powers. I gather sun to give me warmth, the warmth of love. I gather star to give me shine, in the darkest of my hours. I gather air to fill my lungs and drive my breath. I gather water to cleanse and heal my wounds. I gather earth to nurture and strengthen my soul. Each harbinger of rebirth helps me to reclaim, to rebuild, to renew.
You cannot break me now.
I am stardust.
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Contrivance
Collect my facets
Take the pieces with careful hands
Display and lavish them with
The sweet shadow of golden touch
Wrap me tightly in a blanket of breath
Hot, hot, hot and lush
Lay me on a polished and flowered salver
My love pale and fragile
Paired with scarlet heat, passion
 Beauty composed to invite just a taste
A nibble
Then another
Until both are consumed
And the salver as empty
As the night
The hurdles & hopes of a modern day mess 