The Spear Cuts Through Water

by Simon Jimenez

youth, deep in your adolescence, and, like all youths, lonely in your own unnameable way.

“I am not a mandolin. Do not attempt to play me like one.”

and only then did I learn that a moment could last a lifetime.

Listen to the world close its gates.

We were only allowed to depict the approved tales, the tales that showed the Throne as a mighty tree of humble origins that

had not, and would never, stop growing.

to fall from the Spires is certain death.

how strangely people behaved when they were lost.

And you were on fire. And it felt so good to let it burn.

I looked out my window just when they came—my mind not registering what my eye beheld. No matter. It all came falling on top of me anyway.

The next morning, your father would go on to become subsumed in the news of the war. But you would never forget the day you felt you’d really seen him.

“Do you have clarity now?” Jun asked, breaking the silence. Keema did not answer. He was gazing at the road that danced over low hills. It all seemed at once both profound and irrelevant. Some frivolous grandeur. An unknown way to be alive. He didn’t know what to say. “Yeah,” Jun said, to the silence. “Me neither.”

Fathers leave in all sorts of ways. Some of them leave in the dark. Some leave only in their heads, while their bodies remain, staring at the world around them forever distantly. Others fade out over time, like an old photo rubbed raw. Many, gone in an instant.

Not everyone gets to say goodbye.

If you know what’s coming, then what’s the value in being miserable about it?

there is no correct way to shake hands with pain.

“Do you get nervous before a battle?” Jun asked in that black passage. “Yes,” Keema said. “I get nervous.” Jun chuckled. “Why is that funny?” Keema asked, a little insulted. “Fear is not something my brothers would ever admit to. I’ve never met any warrior who would admit to such weakness.” “It’s not a weakness,” Keema said. “Oh?” “Fear keeps you alive.” “Not always.” Jun tilted his head. “Not when fear kills your good ideas. Not when it makes you run and your enemy shoots you in the back with his arrow.” “My fear has never guided me wrong,” Keema said.

Jun shrugged. “Either way, it was not an insult. Not intended, at least.” He made a strange and unreadable gesture in the dark. “It’s interesting that you are so proud of your fear.” “Are you not afraid before a fight?” Jun took off his mask and looked at him. His face appearing and disappearing along the tunnel wall of torchlight. He was smiling.

If only there were a way to hold a moment in your hands and keep it alive forever. But nothing, and no one, lives forever. Not even gods. We are mighty, but we are not invulnerable. Death simply must work harder to catch us—another few hundred years, a few thousand perhaps, until from our fallen corpse a new god is born, like a molting, and whatever we once were disappears.

You can fault the dancer, but more often than not, it is the dance itself that has to change.

who were, in the end, little boys cut down by a

large sword.

But I opened the box that made him go a little mad, so that he would hear the whispers in his head, the hauntings of those he killed, for the rest of his life.

“No one really changes. Our parents make us who we are, and that’s all there is. You speak as if we can will ourselves into being who we are not. But every movement we make, Jun, we make under the influence of others.

One can tell a lot, even in such a state, by the way someone speaks another’s name.

I thought how strange it was that I ever feared the end. That I had ever tried to escape it. And like that, it was done. My hand releasing from its fist. The battle fought. The life slipped from this old tether.

It tastes how you imagine light tastes to a shy flower.

He is stroking my hair as I sleep. I feel safe.

He coughed until he was on all fours once more and she was laughing all over again.

“Will it make you feel better if I pretend to care?” “Yes,” he said earnestly.

The sun rose to a sound as sweet and sharp as a sugared lemon.

This one was like a note scribbled on a piece of ripped parchment, worn from its time in the pocket, the message dire, but the writing soft and faded.

And sometimes you wonder, even now, if maybe your mind has a mind of its own.

You know what it is to be alone. You’ve been too scared to be anything else.

a woman wondering aloud to her friend how long they had been walking for, and how

You may wonder what it was that Jun saw behind that memory-door. What pain, and what bloodshed, that was secreted away for so many years. But this was a tale meant for him and him alone, and matters little in the scheme of the story told on this stage tonight, so this moonlit body will leave it where it lies. If this does not satisfy you, then imagine this: Imagine a great battle in the courtyard of a towering fortress. Imagine a sword, whipping out of its sheath, and a leap of blood as Keema, wide-eyed, watches his arm fly across the battlefield. Imagine whatever lie you like. “The wind’s picking up,” Jun said with his hand in the air.

there were daily concerns that pulled you in every direction but inward.

“Judge not the parent who keeps silent to their child’s cry. There are too many reasons in heaven and earth to disappoint the ones we care for.”

But though I cannot help but wish that when the world quirks and shudders, we have the wherewithal to listen, even I cannot deny how difficult it can be, to accept that sometimes, to survive, we must change our course.”

“A satisfying biography was never my aim,” she said.

“We need our children to find their place in this world. Without a place, they are lost.”

Your brothers shake their heads. “They did not know he was trying to play.”

We are called to our parents like sirens.

thought this was a love story,” you say. Your lola’s insistence has remained with you since the beginning, and you say these words in a quiet manner, with a shrug, as if to let these performers know it is fine, it does not matter that much, this thought—that maybe the definition of what a love story is could be stretched to include all that has up till now taken place. You say it like an apology. Like it is a thing to be apologized for. A runaway child, charging through the porcelain shelves: I thought this was a love story. I had hoped this was a love story. You say it with shame, embarrassed at having said it, wishing you could take it back. You say it, worried that you have betrayed some secret part of yourself that does not wish to be exposed—an old gremlin in you, sick and yearning. You say it with hope. Timid and without conviction. The hope of someone who knows they are about to wake from a dream to a reality they do not understand. The pub awaits, as does your empty bed. I thought this was a love story. You regret having said it; as if you know it will lessen the quality of the tale. Rob it, of its smoke and shadow. But still, you say it. And this moonlit body smiles. And from the wings the patting of the drums slowly builds, and the curtains behind the dancers rise. Because you are right, this moonlit body tells you; this is indeed a love story. Down to the blade-dented bone. And this body asks its parent the Water if there is a chance—if in the deepness of its wa...

“I do not know if this is a reward,” Keema said. “Or if it is a punishment. But maybe it is neither.” He pressed his forehead against Jun’s. The heat immense. Alive. “Maybe you are just here.” And here, they found each other.