a little kindness | [zori]

[sbeeg]

The sun above me and a concrete floor below
Scratch at the chain links, maybe bare my teeth for show

She's everywhere despite being gone. Her clothes smell like her and I can't think of the day when it fades. She haunts the house but not in anyway I can touch. It is not the comfort of a presence but the absence of one that follows me.

I look into the mirror in our shared room. My hair has not been brushed in weeks. I either sleep the entire day or stay up all night chewing at my cuticles and trying to think of anything else besides the pain that threatens to swallow me whole.

I thought she'd come home. I thought I'd get to see her grow old beside me. I thought we might just be that lucky.

My knotted hair hangs against the back of neck, suffocating and itchy. We used to look similar when we were young. Ma would braid our hair and tie the ends with the same colored ribbons. That was before Kahinta out grew me. Before we realized my hair would never curl. Before the Games changed us all.

It feels like I am staring at a stranger. A haggard young woman who looks exhausted and hurt. I blink and suddenly I'm seeing the footage of myself five years ago climbing through the branches of a redwood tree. Exhausted, hungry, and eyes wide with paranoia. A piece of Kahinta's reaping dress wrapped around my wrist, dirty and bloodied by days of fighting.

Even in the darkest times of my life she was there. How am I supposed to do anything if she's not here?

I grab a pair of scissors from the dresser's top and start clipping at the tangled mess of hair at my neck. The knot has fallen to the floor, loose hairs covering the shoulders of my shirt, before I realize what I'm doing. But I don't stop. It feels good to have control over something. Even for a single moment.

A knock comes at the front door and I pause. Half of my hair as been cut shorter than my chin, the other still long and tangled.

I drop the scissors and head downstairs. My parents are still in their room. They only come out to feed the cattle and occasionally themselves on whatever offerings neighbors have left. I am the most awake person in the house after years of being the daughter in a foggy haze.

I yank open the door and try to wear a smile for whatever casserole is being dropped off.

table credit griffin^^
Lyrics from Deuteronomy 2:10 by The Mountain Goats

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

w i l l o w   a n n

This is the sound of one voice
One spirit, one voice
The sound of one who makes a choice

Mornings came easy to Willow Ann. She liked to say she’d been born at the stroke of midnight, so far as her mother would tell the story, which meant that she wanted to squeeze every last second out of the day. A constant source of frustration to her erstwhile nephew Joshua for sure, and half the reason her niece Briar had clawed her way off the ranch for her own pastures.

Still, it was common for the lady of the Lexington ranch to have milked the cows, checked the chickens, looked in on the sheep and whipped up a spread of toast, eggs, coffee, and grits all before the sun rose. These days even Joshua had mentioned the way she flitted from here to there, nervous energy abounding, going to bed late and waking up early. Burning the candle at both ends, Willow Ann felt half exhausted by mid-morning, but with enough coffee and a smile she could wear her way toward another sundown.

Things hadn’t been the same since the eighty-fifth election. She tried to be okay with it, to be honest – her son and nephew had both implored her to run again, after she’d already faced off against Mace ten years prior – but she quietly declined. She was too busy. Raising a son, trying to get the man child of a nephew to find a sense of purpose, and getting a grip on the direction her own life was going. She’d already served as an advisor to Mace years ago, and the compromises in politics had left something to be desired.

She admitted to herself, and not to the boys or anyone else that could’ve asked, that every time she saw Kieran’s face on the television, all she could think of was Nonnie.

Maybe it was unfair to blame the Emberstatts. It’d been twenty-five years and she’d thought she’d put the memories to rest a long time ago. But there was something about seeing them rise in the district from the very institution that had destroyed her best friend and brother’s wife, the mother of her niece and nephew – as though none of it had ever matter much, in the grand scheme of things. Nonnie had not been the one to stab her district partner in his back; but then, she was dead, and the Emberstatts were alive. In victor’s village, the mayor’s house, and some of them – if she was hearing from the neighbors – making trips to the capitol.

As much as the anger was set to boil, Willow Ann would ask why then, she bothered to spend so much time thinking about what they had, and what she hadn’t?

She’d read the paper one morning, news from the eighty-fifth, another story on the Jones’ and what was left of them. How both girls went through the games, both had been met with life or death, but only one was still sitting alive in the district. Willow Ann had read the piece again and again over the few days, mind turning over how the anxious energy had welled up inside of her. How she couldn’t help but scoff and change the channel at seeing another add for Kieran and the Emberstatts on television.

Joshua’d had a little crush on the Jones girls, if she could recall. Not that that went anywhere. Joshua was to commitment as oil to water. She’d lost a piece of herself, and – at that particular time, she could see more than a bit of herself. In knowing what it was to lose someone; if the dwindling after, the fade to obscurity aside from the occasional ‘oh aren’t you…’ when your last name dusted off a forgotten memory.

That morning she’d resolved to pitch on over to Temple Jones, and to pay her respects. She would say it was for the young woman but she knew, a part of this was for herself. Better to light a candle than curse the darkness, or at least, that’s how she’d always been raised.

So when she came face to face with Temple, Willow Ann offered a smile and a little wrapped package in her hands.

“Ms. Jones. I know – you’re probably sick of visitors coming to call. But I wanted to stop in and see you. You remember Joshua? Joshua Lexington? We live up the way on the ranch,” Willow Ann rolled her shoulder in the direction, and turned back to Temple. What a sight she was, poor dear. “I’m his aunt, Willow Ann. I don’t think we’ve ever had the chance to chat but, well, I thought I’d say I’m sorry. For all you must be going through and, I thought I could brew some tea with you and see how you are.”

She shifted the gift wrapped in brown paper under her arm and fiddled with the zipper on her jacket.

“Not that you have to let me in, I don’t mean to be a bother. I can’t help it sometimes.”

elegant

[sbeeg]

I pace in circles
So the camera will see

I don't recognize the woman on our doorstep and I almost close the door before she begins to speak. She was the aunt of Joshua Lexington from up the road. The family with the dairy cows, and the young man I tried to talk to but couldn't quite figure it out. He was nice, sure, but at the end of the day he was a rancher born and raised in District Ten. My entire life seemed to revolve around what lay beyond it. The arenas, the Capitol, the sacrificial altar I'd been laid on. The same one they killed my sister over.

A diary boy had nothing to say to me that would matter.

However, I had never met his aunt. She seemed nice, with a smile that told me she did it often. She was offering to brew tea for them and for once it wasn't some weird mixture of beef and cheese in a casserole dish. Ma had made tea nearly every hour when the Games were on, when Kahinta was still alive. And when she died she stopped. Not just making tea, but everything.

Maybe tea wouldn't be so bad.

"Thank you," I mutter, stepping aside to clear the doorway for her to come in. "Tea would be nice."

table credit griffin^^
Lyrics from Deuteronomy 2:10 by The Mountain Goats

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

w i l l o w   a n n

This is the sound of one voice
One spirit, one voice
The sound of one who makes a choice

For a second, Willow Ann thought that Temple would close the door in her face. That would have been just fine, too. She didn’t expect to be welcomed in, stranger that she was, especially with all the folk that wanted to get a glimpse of the Jones family after another tragedy. Willow would’ve been on her way with a shrug of her shoulders and content to say that she’d tried. Well – for the length of the walk home, until she found another corner of the sky to fixate on.

Except Temple pulled back and offered entry into her home. Willow Ann gave a nod and pressed into the young woman’s living room. She shifted the gift from underneath her arm and grasped the brown paper in her hands. She held it out to Temple and cleared her throat.

“It’s a journal, with a nice ink pen. I thought you might want something to write what you were thinking about, to keep track of things.” Willow Ann made sure to keep her voice soft. It was only a suggestion – she knew how young women, strong ones the likes of ten knew, were keen on striking it out on their own – but she did hope Temple’s heart was open. She hated to see such a girl’s life mired by grief.

She recognized that grief often worked as mud on the road, set to trap wagon wheels and keep folks spinning in place. It often took a moment to realize you were stuck, and another to figure out how to get going. And sometimes, a hefty push from someone else behind the cart. Someone that wasn’t willing to get a little dirty.

“Where’s the tea? Oh, don’t worry, I think I can manage,” She winked back at Temple and started toward the kitchen. Dusting off a kettle and setting the gas stove to light, she filled the thing and put it over the flame. She searched for a box of tea bags as though the Jones’ were old friends.

“I journal almost every day. Sometimes just a few lines.” Willow Ann mused as she opened a box to reveal some loose tea. She sniffed and gave a shrug. “Joshua would never want me saying this, but he’s been doing it since he was nine. We spent a lot of time writing about his mom.” She missed those days, hard as they were. Lots of tantrums over every cross breeze, but nights she could cuddle with him on the couch and read fairy tales to get him to bed.

She put her hands on her hips and turned to face Temple.

“But look at me running off at the mouth. How do you take your tea Ms. Jones?”

elegant

[sbeeg]

There's bound to be a ghost at the back of your closet
No matter where you live

I know I should be embarrassed by the state of the house but I don't have the energy to. There's dust hanging on old mugs, blankets strewn across the floor and couch, and trash dropped with no one alive enough to pick it up. Feed the cows and sleep. That's all anyone did and even then that was a lot to ask of any of them.

I take a seat and Willow Ann hands me a gift wrapped in crinkly brown paper. Are gifts common after a death? Did people give Kahinta gifts in that short period of time between when I died and when they revealed it had all been pretend?

My lips twitch to one corner, stiff to keep any emotion leaking out. I keep wondering when Caesar Flickerman will pop up on the TV and announce that al the tributes were coming home. That it was all pretend.

But that wasn't going to happen.

I pull back the brown paper and find a small book with dark leather cover. A thin pen whose body seemed to be carved out of wood and stained accompanied it. Willow Ann said it was for writing down your thoughts. The woman rose and went to the kitchen- which had to be an even bigger mess than the living room.

I open the cover testing the leather binding and running my fingertips over the blank pages.

I was never one for writing anything down. All my emotions bubbled in my chest and stayed there. Sometimes they'd escape on my voice, but mostly they lived and died in my mind.

Willow Ann talks from the kitchen, talking about Joshua and how he used to journal about his mom. And suddenly she's asking how I take my tea and I'm hung up on those last words.

"His mom- was she your sister?" I ask because I have to know. I have to know if this woman has lost the same kind of light I have. I have to know if it's possible to smile and make tea and make house calls.

table credit griffin^^
Lyrics from Up The Wolves by The Mountain Goats