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Pat Winslow

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A Strange New Metal

It's for protection, boy.

I don't need protection.
The night is not a terrifying place.
You keep it, old man.

He slapped my thigh - I'll teach you old man!

The way the fire tossed out shadows,
spread its dancers on the moss clad walls.
The way his beard curled
in dark wet tongues against his chest.
I touched him where his skin was thin,
where the folds began. Old man.
He was not an old man then.
All the same, you could see the scars
where the pain began, where it would end.
I bit his nails and washed his hair.
I rubbed him well with goose fat.
We ate. He told me of a strange new metal.
He unwrapped it from his belt.
A fierce blade like sun and earth and spinning leaves.
Feel, he said, and drew the edge along my thumb.
My blood bloomed. He slit his own and pressed it onto mine,
made a smear like north and south and east and west.

Now we are brothers, he said.

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