Her Stay: Haunt of Thieves

Haunt of Thieves

Her Stay

Water weighs the yoked woman

Stooped among refugees crowded here

Not threatened by grenades hurled from the sentry box

They let this trafficker within the gates pass

She may return

Water she bears reached by a path of heel marks

Baked in the mud and useless in the rains

Such times the prisoners have their thirst

Slaked, if they are willing to cup their hands

Save their coins

When that begging class that rings the walls

Has shouted up a handful

Extracted one for ten

The gatekeeper takes two

The prisoners curry favor for the last

She is not certain how she came into this body

Certain she cannot suffer worse for waiting

If her love is not sent to this abode

The gods see in her shape some other deed

Fulfilled. Can he be dead?

She has never felt it

She unships her buckets and finds at an angle to the sun

This face reflect itself ugly…or not so, but dirty and plain

Not still the age that she had been

Not yet wholly resurrected

She feels the guts and nerveless skin

In dispassion, retain a mortal decay

Perhaps her stay is then ordained a short one

Her Stay

War-Making

(2017, Stephanie Foster)