Tarit

On the day Tarit marched off to war, he embraced fair Vekka, pledging fealty, as her little sister Genki made faces and tugged at Vekka’s skirts, jealous. Genki, with her stick limbs and sticky lips and scabby elbows and nesty hair, hooted as Tarit trotted to catch up with his regiment, and chased after him, waving her snotty hanky, till her short legs tired And when death’s racket clamored no more and Tarit returned to his beloved Vekka, he found her clasped in another man’s arms, with a toddler in tow, and whitewashed fences all around Tarit took the pendant he’d worn through seven years of carnage– a wedding ring for his betrothed– and untied it from its cord and slipped it onto a scraggly branch of the rose bush by the gate, noting naught but thorns And as he turned away from the house of his beloved, he beheld a sprout fruitioned, and when Genki took the ring from the roses and slipped it on her finger, Tarit clasped her hand and brought her close, and nestled his face in her well-combed hair