Sublime

Even her bare limbs were so free from suntan that one’s gaze, stroking her white shins and forearms, could follow upon them the regular slants of fine dark hairs, the silks of her girlhood.

ignoble,

inures

She was the gatekeeper at the edge of the world. The final human hymn before all fell to wind and shadow and the strange creaking of stars. She was a pagan chorus. An older song.

Later, after our family was dispersed in all directions and my grandmother and I were living in that dugout hut on the other side of the Tumen River, she told me a story she’d heard long, long ago from her great-grandmother. It was the story of Princess Bari, whose name meant “Abandoned”. She would always finish the story by singing the last lines

hallowed