Deep brown leather, bound and banded
with gold thread cinched in the furrows:
it's easy to the hand. Each finger finds its place.
Stained and in places dry and even crumbling:
but it buzzes and trembles like a living thing.
Strength runs from it into even an innocent grip.
If you raised and whirled it -- the fulcrum
not far, but far enough -- you'd pull back and the edge
would whip down with more than human force.
Notched and blackened, long disused,
a wavering light, a dim croon. Why
would a weapon come to me now, when
my heart is wrung dry and my soul has flaked away?
I kneel in the dark with the blade across my knees;
dust on my tongue, starlight on the floor.
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