Another Life
Nirjie, in Pencil
In another life I was a hermit. A mountain man, my only company the crows. They shared my hungers and kept my secrets. They scrubbed the afternoons with their cries.
Passersby kept their distance. Not that anyone could blame them— my gnarly face and deep-set eyes brimming with bad weather.
How could they know such a rag of a body could carry a heart of spun glass?
There was a girl in the village, warm as an oil lamp, eyes brown as rain-drenched dirt.
But she never came to know my love—no matter how many notes I sent from the hills, in the mouths of crows.