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)