Sestina

Sestina Duet: Six Words, Two Worlds

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Authors note. Eira Linden set a challenge, a game.

Sestina

Our words - 1. tree 2. leaf 3. fire 4. plunk 5. velvet 6. sky

Plunk Eira? Seriously?

I slightly broke the form, but hey. It’s too pretty.

Well…

This is the result.

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I. The Hill Holds Its Breath

by [Eira Linden]


The hill holds its breath around a single tree
each movement slowed to the fall of a leaf
somewhere beneath, the roots remember fire
a sound breaks through it, sudden, a dull plunk
as if the earth has swallowed something in velvet
and refuses to return it to the sky

The light stretches thin across the sky
caught and tangled in the limbs of a tree
the ground answers back with another plunk
a body dropped softly, a loosening leaf
everything wrapped in a hush like velvet
but underneath it all, the old insistence of fire

There was a time this place spoke only in fire
before it learned the patience of sky
before the language of falling became plunk
before stillness rooted itself into tree
before the slow grammar of leaf
before silence dressed itself in velvet

Now it settles, layered and deep as velvet
holding the echo of its earlier fire
the branches reaching without asking the sky
each letting go marked by a drifting leaf
each landing answered by the quiet plunk
of time collecting at the base of the tree

You hear it if you stand long enough, the plunk
not loud, but certain, like a pulse through velvet
the whole field leaning toward the tree
as if waiting for a sign of fire
but only receiving the open, empty sky
and the endless rehearsal of the falling leaf

And still it continues, each leaf
finding its place with a final plunk
beneath the indifferent stretch of sky
the ground closing over it in velvet
keeping quiet what once was fire
feeding it back, slowly, into the tree

Envoi
So the leaf returns again to the tree
not through rising, but through sky and velvet
through the soft insistence of plunk and fire

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II. Plunk in the Middle

by [UpsilonA]

The forest screamed with fire
gravity had given up, just sky.
I swam deliberately in her velvet.
What the actual plunk.
If grief were the leaf,
then me becomes tree.

Not me—no, I refuse tree.
Still the forest barks its old fire.
Silence wraps me in warm velvet,
soft only until a falling leaf
hits with its small, stabbing plunk
before hope can even see the sky.

Twist, turn half blind, consume the sky,
more delectable than any tree.
I name each aching demon, one leaf.
Who am I to try… to become fire.
Enticing thoughts seduce with velvet,
even the truest word lands with a plunk.

I burned a long, slow, private plunk,
detonating across earth, a startled sky.
Life moved slow, refusing the old fire,
built, rebuilt, muzzled into tree.
Lying to myself it could be another leaf,
I descend, stumble, fall into her velvet.

I rise jagged, scraped red against velvet,
every thought dripping its private plunk.
I lick each wound, each borrowed leaf
because I mistook root hunger for tree.
Add fuel. Burn twist turn. Become fire.
Change channel. Static humdrum sky.

Static hums, bruise beneath the sky,
and I drag my pulse across raw velvet.
Every truth I spit hits with its own plunk,
naming what’s left of me, leaf by leaf.
I breathe the scorch, swallow the old fire,
stand unmasked, unmaking the shape of tree.

Envoi
I stand where I once fell, unmaking tree and fire,
naming each bruise that rose toward sky through velvet,
every last truth dropped its plunk, leaf after leaf.