NivKay
Autodidact
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2024
- Posts
- 402
Hi all,
I know this is a tanka thread, but I promise that what I post here is inspiration taken from this thread. Consider this a prose poem. I apologise if I have broken the cardinal rule of this thread (I also apologise to @AoiEndo - I couldn't resist):
The rain had ended just before moonrise.
Its lingering scent caught in the lacquered beams and between the folds of the screens. The night air was soft and heavy with pine, damp earth. Plum blossoms faint, decayed unseen on garden paths.
In the room, like a heart that throbbed to the soft flickered dance of the lone candle, time faltered, or perhaps it rested, brief, relieved.
Lady Aoi stood in silence as Reika closed the screens behind her, moving with deliberate grace, her sleeves whispering against the floor. The sound of them, that soft hush, was the only thing Aoi heard apart from her own heartbeat.
They did not bow. They did not speak. This was not a meeting of courtiers. This was something else.
Aoi’s robe slid from her shoulders. Then, as if compelled by custom, she folded it neatly, each movement slow and precise, as if the space between hands and fabric mattered more than the act of folding. She placed the robe beside her, like a vow. She wore only a thin underlayer now, and it too was loosened and gathered to her waist. The skin of her back, pale and unadorned, caught the candlelight like parchment left unwritten.
Reika approached with a brush already prepared, the ink dark as the darkest river stones. She knelt behind her. She paused and thought to herself, 一期一会, one time, one meeting. Then she let the hush gather around them like silk.
She dipped the brush once more, and touched it to Aoi’s spine. The first stroke was not a word, but presence.
She wrote slowly, from the base of Aoi’s neck down to the small of her back, letting each line curve with the shape of the woman who knelt before her.
I dreamt you backwards
from the end to your first breath
and found I loved you
not for your future promise,
but for your unspoken past.
Aoi’s breath caught, like a Spectral possession. She closed her eyes. This was touch with ink and silence.
She turned slightly when Reika finished, her eyes downcast, her body offering gratitude, penance, submission.
And now it was her turn. She reached for the second, finer brush, she would write smaller, where the lines of skin were more delicate. She dipped it in the same ink and leaned forward, her hair slipping over one shoulder. On the soft hollow of Reika’s inner thigh, she began to write.
You found me before
I became the quiet ghost
they meant me to be
your hands reminded my skin
that it had once held springtime.
Reika’s eyes fluttered closed. Speech still remained banished in this room of ink and night. The room was warmer now, though no charcoal burned.
Reika wrote across the curve of Aoi’s shoulder, just beneath the collarbone:
If the moon could choose,
she would descend in silence
just to kiss your sleep
and leave me with nothing else
but the print she left on you.
Aoi traced her answer between Reika’s ribs, each syllable trembling with restraint:
I cannot be yours
not by rite or decree’s hand
but I am with you,
in the breath between your steps,
in the hush behind your name.
Reika turned her face, just enough to rest her forehead against Aoi’s. Their lips did not touch. They remained poised in the stillness between.
They moved again, shedding what remained of their robes, like time sheds, inevitable, of its own schedule. In the night, two scrolls unbound themselves. Aoi’s hand moved to the arch of Reika’s back:
Your silence taught me
that not all longing must burn—
some ache like snowfall,
gathering where words would fail,
soft and without apology.
Reika’s reply curved over Aoi’s left breast:
This skin was not made
for war or for bearing sons—
but to remember
the shape your longing would take
if I dared to remain still.
They had begun to tremble from the unbearable tenderness of being seen so completely. Reika reached for the brush again, then stopped. Instead, with a fingertip dipped in water, she traced a line along Aoi’s thigh, like a silent verse that seeps through.
Aoi understood.
She leaned in, and for the first time that night, their mouths met. They met like a scroll sealing, final, sacred. They kissed as if they had known of each other’s lips in other lives. When they pulled apart, neither said anything.
Reika wrote once more across the curve of Aoi’s belly, in the space just above the navel.
If they find this ink,
tell them it was only rain,
no brush, no lover
just the garden spilling words
upon whatever would hold them.
Aoi smiled faintly, shimmering eyes. She reached for the brush, but found it dry. So instead, she pressed her palm, still stained with ink, to Reika’s chest, just above the heart.
Later, they dressed in silence. The ink would fade. The robes would cover what was written. But the body remembers, like an ache that refuses to leave. Every stroke a vow. Every smudge a promise. When they parted before dawn, there were no kisses.
They only bowed, as if to say, 一期一会
But both knew: That night, they had stepped outside the world. They had written themselves into each other.
I know this is a tanka thread, but I promise that what I post here is inspiration taken from this thread. Consider this a prose poem. I apologise if I have broken the cardinal rule of this thread (I also apologise to @AoiEndo - I couldn't resist):
The Night of Ink and Skin
Heian-kyō, one spring night long before silence claimed them.The rain had ended just before moonrise.
Its lingering scent caught in the lacquered beams and between the folds of the screens. The night air was soft and heavy with pine, damp earth. Plum blossoms faint, decayed unseen on garden paths.
In the room, like a heart that throbbed to the soft flickered dance of the lone candle, time faltered, or perhaps it rested, brief, relieved.
Lady Aoi stood in silence as Reika closed the screens behind her, moving with deliberate grace, her sleeves whispering against the floor. The sound of them, that soft hush, was the only thing Aoi heard apart from her own heartbeat.
They did not bow. They did not speak. This was not a meeting of courtiers. This was something else.
Aoi’s robe slid from her shoulders. Then, as if compelled by custom, she folded it neatly, each movement slow and precise, as if the space between hands and fabric mattered more than the act of folding. She placed the robe beside her, like a vow. She wore only a thin underlayer now, and it too was loosened and gathered to her waist. The skin of her back, pale and unadorned, caught the candlelight like parchment left unwritten.
Reika approached with a brush already prepared, the ink dark as the darkest river stones. She knelt behind her. She paused and thought to herself, 一期一会, one time, one meeting. Then she let the hush gather around them like silk.
She dipped the brush once more, and touched it to Aoi’s spine. The first stroke was not a word, but presence.
She wrote slowly, from the base of Aoi’s neck down to the small of her back, letting each line curve with the shape of the woman who knelt before her.
I dreamt you backwards
from the end to your first breath
and found I loved you
not for your future promise,
but for your unspoken past.
Aoi’s breath caught, like a Spectral possession. She closed her eyes. This was touch with ink and silence.
She turned slightly when Reika finished, her eyes downcast, her body offering gratitude, penance, submission.
And now it was her turn. She reached for the second, finer brush, she would write smaller, where the lines of skin were more delicate. She dipped it in the same ink and leaned forward, her hair slipping over one shoulder. On the soft hollow of Reika’s inner thigh, she began to write.
You found me before
I became the quiet ghost
they meant me to be
your hands reminded my skin
that it had once held springtime.
Reika’s eyes fluttered closed. Speech still remained banished in this room of ink and night. The room was warmer now, though no charcoal burned.
Reika wrote across the curve of Aoi’s shoulder, just beneath the collarbone:
If the moon could choose,
she would descend in silence
just to kiss your sleep
and leave me with nothing else
but the print she left on you.
Aoi traced her answer between Reika’s ribs, each syllable trembling with restraint:
I cannot be yours
not by rite or decree’s hand
but I am with you,
in the breath between your steps,
in the hush behind your name.
Reika turned her face, just enough to rest her forehead against Aoi’s. Their lips did not touch. They remained poised in the stillness between.
They moved again, shedding what remained of their robes, like time sheds, inevitable, of its own schedule. In the night, two scrolls unbound themselves. Aoi’s hand moved to the arch of Reika’s back:
Your silence taught me
that not all longing must burn—
some ache like snowfall,
gathering where words would fail,
soft and without apology.
Reika’s reply curved over Aoi’s left breast:
This skin was not made
for war or for bearing sons—
but to remember
the shape your longing would take
if I dared to remain still.
They had begun to tremble from the unbearable tenderness of being seen so completely. Reika reached for the brush again, then stopped. Instead, with a fingertip dipped in water, she traced a line along Aoi’s thigh, like a silent verse that seeps through.
Aoi understood.
She leaned in, and for the first time that night, their mouths met. They met like a scroll sealing, final, sacred. They kissed as if they had known of each other’s lips in other lives. When they pulled apart, neither said anything.
Reika wrote once more across the curve of Aoi’s belly, in the space just above the navel.
If they find this ink,
tell them it was only rain,
no brush, no lover
just the garden spilling words
upon whatever would hold them.
Aoi smiled faintly, shimmering eyes. She reached for the brush, but found it dry. So instead, she pressed her palm, still stained with ink, to Reika’s chest, just above the heart.
Later, they dressed in silence. The ink would fade. The robes would cover what was written. But the body remembers, like an ache that refuses to leave. Every stroke a vow. Every smudge a promise. When they parted before dawn, there were no kisses.
They only bowed, as if to say, 一期一会
But both knew: That night, they had stepped outside the world. They had written themselves into each other.
