TO CHOOSE, ALL RISE

Judicion to judge with
gavel to base
court is in session
arrive with your face

hearts to be weighed
sins be unearthed
virtues accounted for
mercy at birth

but later, no mercy
no greasing the wheel
of that which you've broken
or that which you steal

Courage is noble, here
talk with your chest
and lower abdominal
muscles, then rest

jury will hear you,
argue with fate,
see what was love
and then what was hate

wisdom is listening,
no strength in power
truth will unfold
and the liars shall cower.

Guilty or innocent?
Prove us at once
all things in center,
but what verdict haunts?

evidence webbed,
but the pathway is linear,
only one truth at a time
can be in an ear

look to your people,
pray not you've wronged them
pray not they wrong you
pray not with song nor hymn.

* * *

We had a campfire for ourselves; me, my grandmother, my aunt, and my cousins. We crisped veggies and they toasted some kind of horse-hoof snack, that bubbled when it got hot. It was mixed with honey, and apparently, got quite gooey when it was chewed. I stayed away from it, but the smell made me jealous. The Rater had baked a pie, and just to be festive, I had some for myself. It was made from the berries I'd picked myself, and some things she'd bought from the market. The grain, predictably, made me itch, but the taste was a reward for all my struggles of the past four years. If only I could have found a recipe that would make the same taste, without the things that made my stomach turn. The Rater had something similar to say about her ex-husband, as did The Collector for hers. We joked about The Oaf's trite comments, and the stupid way he said as low as he possibly could, "Yyyyuuuhp." Then when his guard was down, his voice was a full pitch higher. Like he was constantly pushing the air from a place that would make him seem more grand, and imposing. We shook our heads and laughed at his faulty act, each recalling a time when he'd shown himself as anything but grand, and imposing for all the wrong reasons. He had, apparently, been especially harsh to The Collector when she'd had her first child, as well as to her younger sister. She was a member of the family I hadn't met yet, but heard was living in the mountains where my father, The Illustrator, had run off to. He'd apparently been renting out a room that she and her boyfriend had offered to him.
The Collector jabbed, "At first, I thought you WERE him, and that he'd just lost weight. And gotten shorter," she laughed.
I stuck out my tongue. "I'm more of a writer, and I'm not old enough to have kids. I actually liked taking care of the little ones here, though."
She looked at me like I'd just given the wrong answer. "You were terrible to them – all you did was order them around and pick fights. You pushed my youngest son at the ground, and now all he does is complain that his back hurts!"
I felt indignated. "Hey, he RAN at ME! All I did was stand still... with my arms out. I really did try with them, I'm just not very mature myself. Is he okay, then?"
She grunted. "Your dad would've had a spine about me making fun of him. Then he would've made a joke about dragging wounded people off in a coffin, or something. You really are different." She looked upset about it, somehow.
"Do you miss him?" I asked.
Both of them shrugged, and looked around. The stars were bright, the trees were visible by our campfire, and the fireflies were around the yard. Frogs croaked. But nobody said they missed him.
"Huh," I replied to the silence. "I guess he wasn't that great a person."
She wavered her hand. "He wasn't a bad person... he just never did anything good, for anyone else. And he ate all our food, before we could get a shot. He's part of the reason I had to move out in the first place – nothing left to eat by the time he got there. I'm surprised he left at all, I didn't think he could leave our mother's basement! Hahaha."
I nodded, understanding. "So he was a shut-in."
The Rater ate a hoof-glob on a wheat cracker, and thumbed the goop into her mouth as she chewed. Then she swallowed it, and said, "He was just moody, and never wanted to do anything. It was like the world wasn't good enough for him."
The Collector laughed, "Whoever your mother was, she must have had all the pity in the world – I can't believe he even got someone in bed."
I felt offended, to learn my father by blood had been such a wench. He sounded like a drain on everyone around him. I wondered if I was like that too, or if I gave back enough. I looked around the yard, one last time, and saw all my hard work looking back at me. The sidewalks of stone, the rock beds for the trees, the flattened ground, and the garden beds. I decided that, actually, yes I had.

After that, I only saw The Oaf one more time, when he was helping us carry our belongings into the carriage, for the new house. The Rater was downsizing, and The Collector had earned enough for her own place in another town thanks to her eye-drops and oily-hands routine. She was even becoming a food expert, though I found her doctrine came from a less-than-reputable source, and seemed mostly to promote the kinds of foods people already ate, no matter how sick or large it made them. Her textbook had been paid for by The Great Seed Commission, who traded crop-seed worldwide (as far as they claimed). Her license came from The Agricultural Society, which handled livestock. It seemed a bit of a stacked deck in favor of those who stood to gain from her support, in name. But it was progress, nonetheless, and she'd be feeding her children finely on its rewards. I had inherited a desk and a sofa chair, which needed to be brought back to my father's house. I was nervous to even let The Oaf see where I lived, in case his mind soaked with ideas in the middle of a drunken night. But he eased my nerves when he said it was the most inconvenient, out-of-the-way location I could have possibly picked, and that he'd hoped to never return. He asked for a hug, and in all honesty, he looked less dangerous than normal. Since the death of Thunder, I saw him at his grimmest, and he was finally acting responsible enough to match his boasting. You can't punish someone for doing something right, just because they're always doing wrong! I was never going to call him 'grandfather', but I could stand to call him 'human'. So I gave him a quick hug, in the most 'related by blood' way I possibly could. I was expecting a sinister laugh, and for him to snap my back in half and carry me off into the darkened side of the woods. But instead of looking like he'd won a game, he seemed... thankful. Possibly even redeemed. Then he shook my hand, and thanked me for all my hard work on the grounds.
"I hate to say it," he said, "but without your help, we never would have sold that house. Pretty soon, I've gotta get back to my hotel and pack. I'm shipping off for work again, tomorrow."
It made me hopeful for his future, knowing he was to return to Arabia soon (for real, this time), and likely meet someone other than his ex-wife, or the ladies in town. They'd stopped letting him flirt with them, once the rumors of his participation in the slave-show reached their ears. They could tolerate pornography, but not child abuse; even if it was only indirect, and accompliced by funding. Had they known what he'd done to me, I wonder if they'd have stopped long before that. But I was trying to, at a distance, teach him to nurture his human side. If he suddenly changed into a grandfather worth knowing, I would lose an enemy, which was no great loss at all. So I showed him support with my words for his future, I even joked that he should have kids of his own... which he didn't seem to like the thought of. I told him there were women, or even men (being blunt about things, there) who might love him anew, and that there was nothing wrong with that. He seemed to think I was talking about myself, which made me feel uncomfortable all over again. But I decided to have hope for the man, after all. I told him he should raise a family of his own, one day; and that if he learned from the past, he'd made a great father. I knew, at least, that before they aged too much, they'd be safe from him. Especially if he stopped drinking, which I also recommended. But I suppose now that was me, playing dice in the caves. Perhaps I shouldn't have said it at all. I told him some of my concerns, which he easily downplayed and pretended never happened... but I could tell he'd heard them. I was even more delicate with that than when I'd told The Rater.
I said, "You were terrible with boundaries, which made me uncomfortable a lot of the time. And very loud around the house. Your anger made it impossible to sleep, and that was when you weren't waking us all up with your midnight puking sessions. But those are the worst things about you, as far as I know."
He nodded too quick, like he was excited to hear the feedback. "I understand, I haven't been the best husband. But I've stopped drinking, now, and I'm ready to get back on the horse again. Thank you, actually. Normally I would have slapped you, but today, I'm hearing your words as refreshment. Perhaps it's knowledge that makes a much finer brew than mead or wine." He looked like a friend who'd just been met for the first time, and that uneased me, but I took it for a good sign. Then he said, "I'm finally ready to become the man I promised to be."
I tilted my head, scarcely believing this was the same person I'd just spent four years dreading the presence of. It was like some of those Buddhist proverbs he was always digesting had actually reached his stomach, for once. "I couldn't have put it better myself," I shrugged with a laugh.
He offered to buy me tea, but I suddenly felt this was going somewhere I didn't want it to. Then it all creeped back, all at once, that sickly, crawling feeling. It bittered me to realize what he was doing: now that his wife had cast him out, he was looking for a new romantic venture. All of the abuse and harassment were just the product of his frustration, being married to a woman when he'd obviously preferred men. I was only the recipient of his anger because I was the only male who wasn't strong enough to threaten him, perceptibly. Now, all of a sudden, he was turning up the charm and flattery, on ME. The way he'd treated his wife, he was suddenly treating ME, as if I was his 'next course'. I squinted, and gritted my teeth, feeling duped. Of COURSE he wasn't going to try and be my family, of COURSE he was just making one last attempt. I should have known... this was his final deception. The last chance he knew he'd have to try and bait me onto his hook, the fair way – which was how he'd snagged his wife in the first place, I slowly realized. He must have sugared her, peppered her, and thrown petals every day until he'd gotten what he wanted... only to give up on the effort and toss toenail clippings instead, a decade later. And THAT, wasn't fair at all – nor was asking one of your DEPENDENTS on a DATE. I seethed to see him for his truer, nastier self, once again... hidden behind a sheen of flowery promise. He hadn't changed one single, solitary bit.
"Anyway," I contested myself to say, "it was nice seeing you." My jaw could barely open for all its clenching.
"You need me to leave?" he asked, looking dopey. Another part of the act, like he didn't understand there were forty years of age and four years of festered time between him and I. Like -I- was the one being abnormal, or outright malignant. Like it could all just be forgotten, and erased, in an instant, if I let it be. Like slicing off a tumor, and expecting it not to grow right back from the same stub. I was not going to let that be my life. Even if he'd been my age, I would have said "hell no" a thousand times, because it's the PERSON I don't like, inside. His behavior was just as rotten of the rest of him, and that's what I hated. And that's before you get to his hygiene. Souls and hearts might be pure in aether, aye, but he'd drank and raged his rusted black. Forget wisps, his spirit probably looked like a geode cobbled out of shit. He was living in a fantasy world of his own making; where the consequences of his actions didn't exist, and anything he wanted belonged to him. I do not belong to anyone.
"Yes," I said quite tensely. "I've got to clean up my life-" I paused, feeling caught. "...I mean, my house."
He nodded, pretending he saw nothing. Ah, so there WAS forgiveness in that rotten, bony cage of his... he'd just been reserving it for when it would win him favor. "Welp, I'd better get going, then. Road's a long one, seas are rough. It's gonna be a hell of a trip, that's for sure... aaayyyyuhp."
I watched him leave, and walked inside when I was sure he was gone. I locked my door, and barricaded it with my sofa chair for the night. Just in case.

The next week, he was gone. I was fifteen now, and legally (according to The King), the proud owner of my family home. No offense to The Illustrator and my grandmother, but even dead, The Surgeon and Teacher still felt like my real family. Perhaps it was because my extended one had been, all things considered, a remarkably silly ordeal. But I enjoyed getting to know them, and learning where I came from, at least halfway. The rest of my origins would have to remain a mystery. Everyone but The Oaf, I considered a friend... if not for our vastly different lifestyles, I'd have probably gone and visited... but my nose could no longer handle the smell of cooked meat, especially not when it leaked into where I slept. I walked outside, to lounge in a lawn chair that I'd found in the storage shed, and had forgotten all about. It was dusty, like everything else inside, so I'd need my talent for restoration to reclaim it. Outside, the grass was yellowed, and the reapers of taller age were threshing. The Manager saw me yawning outside my house, and decided that because I was old enough, I should work as well, if I wanted some coin. I did need it, actually, if I wanted to eat... now that I was on my own again.
He asked, "What's your name, boy?"
I said, "Don't have one – everyone calls me The Reaper."
"I've never seen you with a sickle," he replied.
"It was a joke," I shrugged, "they said that was all I'd amount to."
"How lucky for you," he chuckled. "That's exactly what I need."