Robin Eggs

If you were waiting for the wind, you didn’t tell me. You didn’t talk about the slanting sun that fell over the heap of barnboards, or the flames that took all our letters. I was the one who left, so I’m the one to blame. If I got lost in the labyrinth of land mines scattered over our city, I never said so. We both knew the unspoken things, the ghosts with the long fingers. Once we watched the mist creep under the pines, shroud the pyramids we were building. We were eleven, twelve, almost thirteen. There was a broken cassette tape, heel-crushed and blooming from a thistle. There were two blue eggs, early birds like we were, still spattered and spangled, still sheltered by that calcium caul.

Girl at the Market

The air is thick with burning cloves, with solanine and coriander. You are wearing the string of red coral beads I brought you in a goat skin pouch. A tagine in the souk is simmering fat forkfuls of  fish and ginger, but you wave away the invitation. I scatter a few cashews among the persimmons on the table. I won’t wait forever, and you won’t hurry for anyone. 

Checkers

Klee plays checkers, blue, white, blue, white, blue. Each square staccato, tap step soliloquy, spin swirl, cymbal brush. You are a dizzy witness, toes tipped in fire. You can’t keep up. You can’t stay. You have things on that list, you have people to see. The sky is waiting. Don’t keep her waiting.

Lorette C. Luzajic is a Toronto based writer who studied journalism but loves poetry and small fictions. Her work has been published widely and internationally, and nominated several times each for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She recently won first place in a flash fiction contest at MacQueen’s Quinterly. Her work has been translated into Urdu. Her most recent book Pretty Time Machine is a collection of ekphrastic prose poems. Lorette is also the editor of The Ekphrastic Review, a journal devoted to writing inspired by art. She is also an award-winning visual artist whose collage paintings have been collected in over 25 countries. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca.