previous part here: https://jordynsaelor.com/2026/09/10/prattle-chatter/
all parts here: https://jordynsaelor.com/cant-catch-me-now/
***
I explored the city
like a good adventurer
and learned the river was named
after a wellspring
in the not-so-distant mountains
craggying up the horizon;
the water gurgled through porous rocks
like a sieve,
so it came out clean
(at least, clean
before people bathed
and paddled
and washed their clothes in it).
And I learned
nobody liked a person with skin
“the color of a dead fish”
so that was rude of everyone
and I almost said
to one parent
holding their teenager’s arm
that nobody liked a person with skin
the color of a dead tree either
but clearly
all the dead tree people
liked each other plenty–
chatting in the streets.
Holding hands in shops.
Playing games in the water.
Climbing the buildings
(approximately as tall as three of me)
and bouncing on the roofs.
The people
liked each other plenty
so like a good adventurer
I tried to figure out why:
the city had
so much noise
everywhere
and so many moving people
and it rather
stunk
unless you were near one of the cooking spots
where they had fish and grains and vegetables
and some weird fizzy purple drinks
(which I got “for free”
after healing someone’s burned fingers
before anyone could stop me
from placing scary, metal hands
on a pen
and writing
on the person’s arm),
but near as I could figure
the people liked each other
for no good reason at all,
they just
lived together
and that was enough
to like each other.
I even tried to write about it
while drinking my
loads of purple drinks,
but in the river’s reflection
beside the table they let me sit at,
my stained tongue
and teeth
and sunburnt forehead
distracted me
from writing
the grand reason
these people got along.
So I healed my sunburns
with strokes of purple drink
then I took a nap
on the roof of a shack
so pointy no one was coming up to bounce on it,
and I dreamed of
turning my whole skin purple
with drinks
just to hear what they’d say.
But no dead-tree brown people
found me
in my purple dye,
just feathery dracans
with caricaur teeth and lanky tails,
and demons
with a mother’s touch,
and gods who want a friend
but must reason with little children
because no one else believes in them
without putting them on a throne,
thrones of glass and blue
and raindrops glued
to scales
chiming
from above…
I wandered
an underwater forest
with my purple skin
and spoke to old ancestors
who warned me of a witch
ruining history
and when I woke
on the roof of the shack,
the sun had gone down
but another bright star
was rising from a mountainless horizon
and the brown tree people
kept going about their business
in the streets
and Sieve River
and I
climbed down
to find better clothes
without the dust of
caricaur claws
ground into them.
***
header photo by Fatih Gu00fcney on Pexels.com
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Jordyn Saelor 