Table of contents
***
My two elective Strings of Fate
classes had the names
“divining the weave of the future”
and
“karma as a lens for interpreting the past.”
In my fifteenth year I studied karma
and in my seventeenth I studied weaves;
yes, I know the stereotypical approach would be to
learn about the future before kicking you out
to see if I’d succeed
and grow paranoid of the past after kicking you out
to make sure nobody saw me
but no,
first I had to figure out
if you’d been lying to my face.
Then after, I had to figure out
if I’d ever see you again.
Yes, I wrote the first (and every) letter to you,
knowing you would never read it.
How you like that,
Clarissa,
you who’ll never read what I have to say to you?
You’ve got no defense now, do you?
In my fifteenth year,
karma taught me
you knew how to punish
and get blessed for it,
and I knew how to take persecution
and think better of you for your sympathy,
but when I unaligned
my good graces
from your smile
the game changed.
You knew how to punish
and get blessed
but I learned how to inbreed blessings
in cesspools
and make
curses
behind your back,
I used your
blessed children against you,
and after you were gone
the Strings of Fate said
I had torn us apart for all time
and I cried
that I’d never speak to my friend
of over half a century
again
or maybe
that my friend
of over half a century
quit being my friend
long ago.
Then I used the salt in the tears
to scrub your journals clean
and erase
sketches of your summoning ring
so no one could know
where you went
in order to follow.
And I never took another fate class
to learn what might’ve happened in the strings
if I’d used the water
and opened a waygate
to your realm
instead.
Probably,
a dragon would’ve eaten me.
Maybe one
had already eaten you.
Because the strings
had decreed
we’d never meet again
and regardless of our what-ifs
and wishes,
the strings make sure
they’re never wrong.
Jordyn Saelor 