Hello and welcome to a project I have been working on this past week called Outfit of the Writer, where I document what I wore, and what I wrote during the day. This installment surrounds my sweater collection, the perfect cut of cloth for any and all creatives, especially Writers, even thought it was 75 degrees in February haha. But I digress!
Without further ado, let us begin with Tuesday. (Not because I hate Mondays, because of President’s Day was this past Monday).
Tuesday I wore my favorite sweater, which I got from Target three years ago. It is perfect. I have always loved the deep gray color, the fit, and the knitting pattern. I feel like this sweater is perfect for moody pieces, especially during an entertaining storm. This is what I wrote listed below on Tuesday!
The following pieces were inspired by words requested through my Instagram (penname.katemsine) and are as follows: knitting needles, traveler/s, and rabbit ears. Thank you again to those who requested the words, and without further ado, my Tuesday poems.
***
Lovebird (inspired by “traveler/s” requested by Ally)
During the War,
there was a shortage of carrier pigeons, who had also been drafted to service,
leaving vultures to pass love letters between couples.
The vulture,
a rather morose creature,
could not fathom how one could remind others of the dawn,
or garden roses,
or sunlight on the water,
their world taught to them by wrinkled noses and side glances of people passing by.
But, the vulture being a good worker,
took on the responsibility,
delivering kind words around the world,
ferrying love
shepherding adoration to window sills,
balconies,
arms
and in turn,
the vulture was awarded with shining eyes when they appears,
gasps of excitement,
waking butterflies within these grim reapers,
who only thought life was simply quiet.
conferring on
Clotho (inspired by “knitting needle,” requested by Ash)
took my pavement scraped hands and ushered me to sit as she worked on my lifeline.
It glittered like gold in the light as she knitted it through the pores of a sweater,
talking to me about men who had come to her years ago about if she could do anything to salvage a love’s life, if they could have more, if they could have different,
“No,” she had said, “I just make them into armor.”
She bowed her curled hair,
eyes focused on the fabric,
as I asked my questions
such as
“What is a hero?”
“Why do you need to protect your life?”
“Isn’t death a visit?”
Clotho smiled at my curiosity,
she raised her work to the light,
pinching her eyes tight as she inspected for any flaws.
She then slipped it over my shirt,
life glittering through the stitching.
She took a step back and raised my head to meet her gaze.
She smiled down at me,
“My little mortal,” she said, “You are young and body foolish, today you scrape your knee, yesterday you bruised an ankle. Death is a house that waits everyone’s entry, and a hero is a person who doesn’t make their grandma worry.”
****
Luck of the Draw ( inspired by “Rabbit Ears,” requested by Ash)
Boy, be careful with that cigar,
pull in the smoke then expel it instead
of inhaling,
or else you will get sick,
be pulled into the thick of nicotine,
thrown into the indigo stick
and in the confusion of the venom
in the system,
attempt to gain ground,
by bracing, planting your feet
and instead of coming out of the storm,
you will find that you and I have grown rabbit ears,
and our minds are now full of our wives
concern for our health.
****
Wednesday
Introducing a new addition to the sweater collection. I just got this sweater from my little sister for Christmas, and I cannot even tell you how many times I wore it! It is the perfect size for tucks, oversized sweater looks, and just to feel super cozy. Below is what I wrote for Wednesday (which landed on Ash Wednesday).
Snowball
I feel like a crumbled up ball of newspaper on fire,
smothering clarity,
smudging Times New Roman,
dripping news in inkblots.
Ashes (inspired by “ash” requested by Anne)
At the Ash and Dash drive thru,
I dip my head out the window,
eyes turned up smiling at the minister,
who takes a Q-tip to her sacred contained of anointed ash
and prays over me,
tracing over the mark across my mind,
synching the cross to another vessel,
and as she does,
she sees why I need God.
Car as messy as the char,
wrappers on the floor,
watered down Starbucks in the cupholder,
and a frayed dash sticker of the resting one.
Territory
A Russian photographer, Dmitry Kokh,
captured polar bears vacating abandoned homes in an abandoned weather station,
their white fur pure
framed perfect around the irony,
of finders keepers, losers weepers.
Beowulf Boy,
the world is full of sticks and stones
but the hardest thing to heal from is the consonant of a word,
the constant churn of rounding a mouth
that is too young to know the meaning,
but not the hurt of failure,
war easier to declare than battle,
Grendel quicker to slay than to say
Grendel’s Mother,
energy faded to even entertain the ending of a Dragon.
Thursday
Who doesn’t love a good hand-me-down? If you don’t, I’ll take them! This sweater was given to me by my mom, and it is so comfortable! It is also lightweight, so it is easy and breezy when a spring fling occurs during February. Below is what I wrote for Thursday!
Cadavers
Heda Jan twisted her fingers under the faucet. Her skin red as hemoglobin as it unfurled and knitted under the water, singeing in her skin. She looked past the upset flesh, her eyes focused on the basin of the sink, noting how it collected murky water, before the matter dissolved down the drain.
"Matter can never be destroyed," Oxford's voice said, still fresh in her mind. A patient had died. His body was limp, as if weighed down by emptiness, depressed that there was no longer a soul to carry.
Heda Jan had cried over the boy, eyes still sharp from her tears. She had taken the gloves from her hands, and combed her fingers through his matted hair. The fever from infection was ebbing away from his forehead.
That's when Oxford said, "Matter can never be destroyed."
He stood in her peripheral. She could feel his gaze on her. She wiped away the tears and straightened back.
"It feels like it has," she said. She had looked down at her hands. The gloves stained with blood, veiling her palms, distant from death.
“Heda Jan,” Oxford said. She turned to him. His eyes showed nothing. Dark, cold, sharp. But if you broke from his gaze, you could see that taking in the wounded was wearing him down. Circles hollowed out his eyes. His hair slicked back from hands trying to pull ideas out of his frayed brain. His white coat occupying pink histories on its fabric from so many surgeries before.
“When the men come to cart his body, go with them, talk to his family, eat with them, drink with them, then you’ll see,” Oxford looked to the soldier, silent in the cot.
He must have known. She heard the news in the village that their encampment had been taken over. Heda Jan had been taken into the family of the late soldier and waited. Within a day the war was over, and then, they came.
A woman howled into the castle. Her marled voice etched into the air, bringing out more human cries morphed into something wild, but still relative, their marbled sounds raking down the hallway, wet heels thundering on the floor.
Heda Jan shut off the water and shook the buzzing nerves from her hands, drying the skin as she looked out onto the twisted forest that wreathed the castle. The window looked out onto the left side of the entrance, an eye to the scarred face, exposed to the thistle growing in between the pores of brick, and the blood entering the passage.
Women bright in the morning light burned against the briars like licks of flame, skin shining red in the dawn, flesh flickering, uninterrupted by cloth, thighs plated with leaves and twig reside, wild, but somehow still relative to Heda Jan.
They padded beside each other, taking in their comrades with black irises and mouths too wide to be real. Heda Jan gripped the edge of the sink. Her stomach knotted as the howls grew louder voice by voice, becoming one, as if a choir.
Heda Jan’s fingers pressed against the metal, the rim pinched against her ribs as she stretched toward the window. The voices rose higher, calling on for more in their song. Heda looked to the woods.
Branches broke away for a woman with her back bowed to Heda Jan. She was broad shouldered, thick muscle tensed in her red washed back as she carried the legs of something armored, human. The woman craned her neck and offered a solo in the choir, struggling with the weight of her catch. She paused, looking to the woods, where her cohort appeared, shrugging through the greenery, carrying the top half of the man, her black eyes shining, mouth parted into the smile only hungry dogs have. In one swoop she raised her head, to sing, lilting with her partner into the castle.
“Oh lord,” Heda Jan whispered.
The man’s head was bowed into his chain mail chest. Eyes closed. Blood rippling under his chin, another soul lured in by Sin’s Coven, a collection of feral women who pined after the witch’s power, and enjoyed feeding their leader. They went out to villages in the night, their bodies curved mystery in the dark, their hands always reaching out for their victims, eyes never blinking, voices soft, unlike the nails that raked through the silence.
Heda Jan reclined. The man, wilted in between the woman, disappeared around the edge of the entrance.
“Oh my,” a woman said, voice serrated, hooking into Heda Jan’s back, “Looks like he died.”
Heda Jan exhaled through her teeth.
The woman cooed, “Did you try your best, doc?”
Heda Jan glared at the woman. The visitor held Heda Jan’s gaze, like balancing a blade, she bit her bottom lip, her smile shining in her eyes.
“I think you do enjoy killing after all,” she said. White teeth showed bright through the blood plated on her face.
Iron filled Heda Jan’s mind.
A horrible hiss hushed as the body of the soldier was dragged across the marble floor. His blonde hair rippling after him as he passed behind the visitor. Heda Jan met the visitor’s gaze evenly. She hadn’t looked away from the doctor. Her smile still bared like something rabid.
“It’s sad that that is what we have to enjoy in this place,” Heda Jan said, her voice low.
The visitor blinked at the doctor. She shifted in her stance, taking the words.
She chimed, “So you aren’t happy that we took you in?”
“‘Took’ is a proper statement,” Heda Jan said, spitting her words. She rounded her shoulders, squaring herself with the visitor.
The visitor’s smile faded away. Her eyebrows lowered. The glint in her eyes dulled. She looked over Heda Jan. The muscles in her jaw tensed, like red ribbon under the mask of blood, trying to keep from slipping.
Heda Jan stilled. She studied the woman’s hands, covered over with blood, relaxed.
“You are an educated woman, doctor,” the visitor said, her voice a hiss. Heda Jan looked to see the woman look around her room. She nodded at the glass jars of herbs by the sink, the books by her bed, the window outside, then the man on the cot.
“You studied under Dr. Oxford Match, a name I heard a few times before I joined the Coven, I know he was a very talented man.”
"Don't you dare say his name," snarled Heda Jan. She thought of Oxford looking after her as she had mourned their last patient. How he held his breath so she could fill the tent with her crying, and how he placed his hand on her shoulder to hush it all.
The visitor straightened. She took a step into the room. She smiled as Heda Jan gritted her teeth. She flexed her fingers. Heda Jan remembered how the women's nails sound cutting through men. She looked from the hands to the visitor, her black pupils shining in the growing light.
"Do you wish he were here instead?"
Heda Jan swallowed. She could feel her heels cement in the marble floor. Her muscles burned as she locked into place. She folded her fingers into her palm, the nails sinking into the skin.
"Do you wish that you died with him?"
Heda Jan exhaled through her nose. She could feel her body struggling under the visitor's gaze. Her breaths breaking at the top of her lungs, burning her throat with words that smoked her flesh.
The visitor padded closer to her, until she finally stood in front of Heda Jan. They held each other’s eyes. Another arrangement of howling broke into the air. The visitor didn’t stir. A smirk curled on her face. Heda Jan scowled. Her nails pushing against muscle.
A thought flashed across the visitor’s face.
“Well here,” she said, she swiped a swatch of blood from her chest, white flesh exposed through the sheath of blood. The visitor held her hand up, and took a beat, as if taking in a pledge and in one swift movement, marked Heda Jan’s shirt with red. Breath caught in Heda Jan’s throat. She felt the visitor’s eyes on her.
“You can carry him wherever you go,” she whispered.
Heda Jan stared at the swatch, the disruption, the scar, the badge the Coven war. She did not look up at the visitor. She just looked at the blood. She released her hands from her palms, opening her hands to the venom of pain.
The visitor chuckled and padded out of her room, her heels quiet as she padded out of the room, howling as she joined her sisterhood down the corridor.
Heda Jan stood there, staring at the red. It laid there, quiet. She thought of the soldier in the cot, the soldier being carried in this morning, the peeled armor the morning she was taken into the Coven. She looked to the man, silent in the cot. Blood pounded in her head, blotting out the blood in her peripheral. She paced to a glass jar near the sink, grabbed a handful of mustard-gold herbs, letting the dried stems embed the gulley in her palms as she padded to the man and held the plant under his nose. She planted her other hand on his chest, and pressed against his sternum.
Through bared teeth she hissed, “Please, come on, wake up.”
Howls rose in the emptiness. Heda Jan bit her lip. Breath pressed against her chest. Heda Jan put the flower closer to his nose. She pressed harder against the sternum. The voices drifted farther into the castle. Heda Jan glanced at her door, imagining the visitor’s eyes on her.
The man broke from his silence, his body wrenching up to heave in a breath of air. His brown eyes wide and wreathed in red, his chest heaving as his lungs resumed function. Heda Jan exhaled. She threw the herbs on the floor.
“Wha- what did you do?”
The man blinked on Heda Jan in horror. The woman inspected the man, peeking under his tunic, met with the dressing that was still holding his wounds. The man swatted at her, his gaze unyielding. He pulled her in with a frail grip.
“What did you do?”
Heda Jan softened. She looked the man over, he looked wild, but relative.
“I’m sorry but I had to put you under. If they knew that you were alive, they would have taken you to Sin,” she said.
The man whispered the name, his eyebrows furrowed as he attempted to piece together the last moments of life.
“Now please,” Heda Jan said. She turned away and dove under her bed, upheaving a sword she had hidden away. The man groaned as he straightened to sit in the cot, stretching his worn body. He opened his eyes at his sword, they brightened at recognition. He reached a hand toward his old friend. Heda Jan pulled it to her, catching his gaze.
“Help me save us all,” she whispered.
Friday
When it is 75 degrees in February, you gotta adapt and pre-celebrate the return of Spring. I got this sweater from Walmart a few weeks ago and I absolutely love it. It is so fun to accessorize with and the color is so cute! Below is the finale for the first OOTW edition!
Wormhole
Would you love me if I were a worm?
If it were a creature that lived in darkness and only learned life by shapes of truth?
Rocks and jewels feel of the same matter,
so it doesn’t matter what I offer right?
Would you love me as a worm?
As a creature who lived in darkness and never grew past that?
I’m not going to change,
I am grounded,
rooted to the core,
chrysalis unsure
process to long, like shedding clothes that only accented my flaws,
wouldn’t you love me
if I were a worm?
An archaic thing that lives in modernity,
the rawest form,
ancient god
that is
vulnerable,
upturned to the sharpness of mortals,
who pluck the words stuck to my skin,
indented from mud
the myth I have crawled through
no pageantry,
like wings have - blinding to the eye
of me,
mechanical - Dedalus’s descendants,
people who know how to explain things,
so what will it be?
Would you love me if I were
a worm?
Candlewick
She burned all the candles in her home
to watch the wicks burn,
diffuse the fire,
and breathe.
Thank you so much for taking your time to read the first edition of OOTW. In the comments, please feel free to tell me what your favorite poem or quote was from this past week. Thank you again!
Wonderful, Kate!!