BREAK MY SOUL
I knew it was gonna be one of those days when I forgot my glasses.
Look now, I don’t really need them. I’m not dependent on them like some newborn at their momma’s tits. I am a grown-ass woman. They’re just nice to have around, you know? For just in case purposes. But mostly all I do is run the same errands every day, and I don’t need no help to see the ground I’ve walked a thousand times before.
I squinted, careful to align the sharp edge of my wakizashi against my forearm. I trailed along yesterday’s barely healed scar and without fuss, sliced another shallow cut into the skin. I collected the welled blood with practiced ease, wiped at the sweat gathered beneath my headband, and glared at the sun until my eyes watered—probably why I needed those damn glasses in the first place. Then I exchanged my blood, sweat, and tears for a single vial of ink.
The ink gleamed a mighty shade of incandescent ebony. No speckles or air bubbles from what I could see. Tamashii ink is an extraction of a person’s soul, they say. If so, the color of mine must be blackity black black black.
The proud inksmith grouched at my scrutiny—a dance we do every time, the motions rote and predictable like a line dance. He could pretend at offense all he wanted, but I was checking this ink. After all, it was always the one time you don’t that comes to bite you in the ass. By now, the master inksmith knew that this was something I had to do, just as I knew that his hemming and hawing was something he had to do. So we danced our dance like old begrudging partners.
He was a tough old thing, with fingers like gnarled roots and skin like stubborn bark. The only softness he had to him was his eyebrows, which clung to him like white cottonwood seeds. Sometimes I wondered if one good blow could scatter them right off his face the way kids wished on a dandelion. How many wishes you think he held in them fuzzy brows?
Ink boiled in the back of his open-air shop, carrying a perfume of apricot blossoms seeping into the earthen-plaster and woven bamboo walls. Straw-knotted sumi sticks hung from the ceiling to dry. Although selling tamashii ink was quite the lucrative business, the inksmith still practiced that old traditional art. Liver-spotted hands kneaded passion and pride into a ball of glue and pine soot.
As he worked, his foot twitched, knocking the wooden frames that were scattered along the ground. His knee bounced higher and higher with every second I lingered over the ink.
A smirk pulled at my lips. The wizened master guffawed. Sometimes, the humor of a younger and more mischievous life possessed me, stealing away the years like a gust of wind smelling of my parents’ sunflower fields.
“Shouldn’t you be going, Sistah Samurai? Don’t you got some place to be?”
Tsk. I certainly didn’t need no reminder of how life has become one errand after another. There was never any time for fun anymore, nor time for teasing old inksmith that grumped too much like my former sensei. He did have a point, though. Even I could recognize when the dance had gone on for too long. No more time for encores. No more time for freestyling. Not even time for a little wiggle.
With a sigh, I gave the master inksmith a parting nod. He gave me a respectful one in turn.
Till next time.
I deposited the ink within the stitched pocket of my obi. My ride-or-dies, my katana and wakizashi, rode shotgun in pink lacquered sheathes on my hip. I plucked the sunglasses from my ‘fro, cleaned off the grease with the edge tip of my haori, and refitted them over my eyes.
I see you looking at me. I know what you’re thinking: this girl done left her glasses at home, but she sure did remember to grab her shades. Well, yeah, ‘cause they make me look like a baaaad motherfucker.
So mind ya business.