Lenten Haiku

I published a thing

I am now the official published author of two (2) books, neither of which are novels, or even technically fiction. But that will come. For now, please feast your eyeballs and headspace on Lenten Haiku. There will be a paperback version available soon, but for now, if you have $2.99 to spare, or if you have Kindle Unlimited, you can take a gander at the ebook version.

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BARTON P. 5

Lily’s head hurt. Not in the kind of general ache that she recalled from long afternoons in the Vern, or from tension, stress, fatigue. Not like that. This was a more acute and piercing sensation that, as her wits and short-term memory returned, must have been caused by a fist.

“Asshole!” she yelled, sitting up too quickly with alarm, arms up and ready to fight. Then: “Shit!” as her vision reeled and the world toppled down on top of her.

…

The warm rock felt good on her face, and she thought she might lay there for a while. Except, her head hurt, and not just a general headache… memories returned sharply, blurred. Fragments.

She opened her eyes slowly without moving, realized she was alone… No, not alone. The smell of copper, iron, feces filled the air, the sound of buzzing, dripping, trickling. She was not alone, but she wasn’t in danger. At least not from those assholes. She had been saved, she would not be dying today. At least not from those assholes. 

As she carefully tilted her head and took in the scene, she saw that someone had filled those bastards with arrows, someone had rescued her, and she started to have an idea who. What luck. Those idiots who followed her might have actually brought Barton to her, saved her days or even weeks of searching. She laughed.

“Shit!” and realized she must have broken some ribs as well as her head.

…

The sound of laughter for the second time today, a sound as unlooked for and out of place as the first time, except this laugh was a different kind altogether. The echo of it carried past Barton across the creek bed, full of relief, joy. And it was a much lighter, higher pitched laugh, a timbre altogether more pleasant, even familiar. 

It was followed by an even sweeter sound. The sound of singing.

“What a beautiful piece of heartache,

This has all turned out to be,

God knows we learned the hard way,

All about healthy apathy…”

Suddenly Barton was transported, seeing clearly his mother’s face, her hands, the light reflecting and refracting on the water. He could almost smell her, almost reach out and touch her hair where the light passed through it and turned its chestnut almost translucent. He was splashing in the shallows, squeezing his little body in between the declivities in the rock where the river rushed and carved slight hollows, holding himself steady with his hands, feeling the roiling water rush over him, listening to his mother sing to his baby sister. She was just a little thing then, and he remembered being jealous of her, the attention, the nearness and closeness to their mother. Of course he didn’t know he was jealous then, he was only eight or nine, not old enough yet to understand these complexities. But he remembered now and named the emotion, holding it in his mind, letting the nostalgia, the sadness, the guilt and shame wash over him. And as he did, he realized he must have turned without thinking, for as he came back to the present, he saw he was heading back toward the grisly scene, back toward the sound of singing and laughter, back toward his sister.