Naru Dames Sundar
Mage // Cirrus
Click to switch halves
Youngling mage, trailing his too-big robes, trailing
Farmer's hopes, pressed like garlic into bread, oven Baked and fragrant. No wizened crone or samite daubed Thaumaturge, for this parched corner, a promontory beyond The painted ink of royal cartographers. Only a dusky boy, Sigils still wet against his skin, no covenant yet to bridge The empty space between earth and sky. All he has is palms Raised, fingers clawing. Waiting. Breathing. Whispering Mumbled verses, stanzas archaic. Marriage vows to a cloud Written in sigils, binding, opening. And water fell.
Farmer's hopes, pressed like garlic into bread, oven Baked and fragrant. No wizened crone or samite daubed Thaumaturge, for this parched corner, a promontory beyond The painted ink of royal cartographers. Only a dusky boy, Sigils still wet against his skin, no covenant yet to bridge The empty space between earth and sky. All he has is palms Raised, fingers clawing. Waiting. Breathing. Whispering Mumbled verses, stanzas archaic. Marriage vows to a cloud Written in sigils, binding, opening. And water fell.
Father sends me roaming, before the water-death stops his mind, before
There is no one left, before our family is nothing but cumuli, nothing
But imprisoned storm-breath. One of us has to find a beacon in the
Heavens below air, some flesh pressed together in the shape of godhood.
I shape my mind into syllables, into word-form bound in a cage, slipping
Down towards the mirror-shape, the lock-form, the empty-space vows
That bind and bridge, whose covenant is the rent in the folds of air
That keep the water-death at bay. There — a god-form, a god-word, a
God-verse tumbling like cloudlets in a waterless sky. Breathe. Shape.
Descend. And in death open the gate. Greetings father. Goodbye father.
There is no one left, before our family is nothing but cumuli, nothing
But imprisoned storm-breath. One of us has to find a beacon in the
Heavens below air, some flesh pressed together in the shape of godhood.
I shape my mind into syllables, into word-form bound in a cage, slipping
Down towards the mirror-shape, the lock-form, the empty-space vows
That bind and bridge, whose covenant is the rent in the folds of air
That keep the water-death at bay. There — a god-form, a god-word, a
God-verse tumbling like cloudlets in a waterless sky. Breathe. Shape.
Descend. And in death open the gate. Greetings father. Goodbye father.
Naru Dames Sundar writes speculative poetry and fiction. His work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Crossed Genres, Nature: Futures, Liminality and Strange Horizons. You can find him on twitter as @naru_sundar and at his blog at A Fractured Shard of Star.