There's a song in your lung and a dream in your eye. (Perse)

[perse]

i wanted pomegranates— i wanted darkness— i wanted him. There is a strangeness here she cannot articulate (the same way she cannot articulate so much – Perse is a shower, not a teller, words are not her warfare). She shouldn’t covet it, the soft way the mare’s muzzle traces her back, the tender warmth of her, the talk of love and gods and why they stand fractured. It shouldn’t dull the thoughts of Him – He should always be first in foremost in her mind, because she is devout. Isn’t she? Do the devout think, because I must when they say they love Him? The mare withdraws and she feels strangely cold without the touch. What if I don’t believe in gods, she asks. “It doesn’t matter,” she says, softly, “He is there anyway.” He likes their beliefs but does not need them – if they won’t bow He breaks their knees, forces them. He takes what is not given freely, if He needs it. (She always gave. Always. He would break her anyway because He liked the sound her bones made when snapped. So did she.) Maybe it’s love, what she has for Him. (Of course it is. It must be.) Maybe she just doesn’t know how to exist without Him. But she can’t question this, the very idea closes her throat and speeds her heart. She is not so misguided as her mothers. She is His. Never mind the quiet warmth of these moments, the way the mare looks in the sunlight, a beauty in the fractures, a strength unknown. “I pray you find it,” she says, but wonders if she does, because there is something in imagining Joscelin wrapped against a form unknown that makes her stomach twist. p e r s e ------------------------------cordis x spyndle

(should we time jump them? perse could use a little 'absence makes the heart grow fonder')