Raisin and Treey (poem)

Raisin and Treey

Raisin, small, brown, round, round-eared, nostrils flared, nose snouty, body furrowed, thick-furred, fur cottony, breeze-catching, short-legged, legs bowing from her sides like levers
Her gait levers her up and down

Treey is a bit of a spider; still, in a piney way, plantish

Treey’s hue is black, white-dotted too, she is grey-green of hair

“Verdigris”

Treey stops. She looks 360°, having a neck (or none visible, but a stalk on which her head can swivel) with no end of flex

“Treey! I’m admiring your mane. They have made a special word for your color.”

“Spell it.”

“A vee to begin, and then an ee.”

Treey can’t grasp letters, so Raisin looks around for visuals. She scurries to a duffle bag, holds it upside down, pulls the strap taut. “That…just the strap, Treey…that is what a vee looks like.”

The bag’s owner from speechlessness rouses. “Don’t… Don’t… Am I really seeing this?”

The bag’s owner arches in his seat and pats his rump, surfacing an object, shiny candy, so it looks. Treey, smiling at the game, winches it from his hand and eats it.

The bag’s owner sinks, whimpering. “It ate my phone.”

“Was it candy?” Raisin whispers.

“It had some sweetness. Mostly not. But I’m inspired… What if we tried a coffee drink, one with the pile on top like a fungus? I haven’t dared, now suddenly I feel I could.”

An airport guard, on his radio, says, “Well, I think…they’re from a UFO.”

A door to the tarmac says AUTHORIZED EMPLOYEES ONLY

“Go through there, through there. I don’t want you shot.”

Sullen billionaire Suleyla Sunning sits in a hired jet. Her husband was supposed to have touched down, very briefly, in this city she wants off her list, as having seen. Embarrassing. Their own plane is doing that thing, and NORAD jets are tracking it this moment, waiting til it falls.

“Falls! Mom! When a jet goes into the death spiral, it’s like kaboom! Crater time!” Her son makes a drilling gesture.

“We need another pilot. Not this minute,” Suleyla concedes. “But in a few.”

“You think they’re dead?” her daughter says. “Dad, and all? I mean, what if aliens…”

Her jaw drops.

Two, sipping Dalgonas, are laughing and being chivvied along by an airport guard. “The Sunnings will let you on their plane. They have an island. They’ll take you where you’re safe.”

“Oh, that won’t be any fun. We’ve come to live life!”

Raisin and Treey

The Proof

(2024, Stephanie Foster)