a grapevine, an altar, a flock of geese.
Lykos was the oldest of us,
His cousin Timaeus was the baby.
I wasn’t allowed in the house,
and I ate what the others didn’t want:
the rind of the cheese,
the crust of the bread,
radishes. Lykos never ate his radishes —
but I liked radishes. I never went hungry.
My mother gave me food off her plate.
This was before my mother left.
I was three, four, five years old.
I was a warlike child.
My mother was a Thracian woman,
and the Thracians are warriors.
Lykos and I wrestled every day.
He was older and taller,
but I was strong for my age.
My mother let us fight it out.
My mother had red hair, like mine, Thracian hair.
She was a slave, so her hair was cropped short,
but I found her beautiful.
She was tall, not meek.
She was born free. The Thracian women are free
until they marry. My mother used to walk
on the shore of the Black Sea,
free
but one day raiders came. They kidnapped her.
They wronged her
and made her a slave.
Once I asked if we could go back to Thrace,
and she said no. She was ashamed.
She said we could never go home.
But she told me about Thrace.
Her father owned horses, precious horses.
Once he dined at the banquet of a king
and drank from a golden cup.
She told me those stories at night.
We shared a stall in the horse-barn.
That part I remember: the sounds in the dark:
the straw rustling; a long snort,
the thud of a hoof.
My mother taught me Thracian words,
tales of the gods,
and how to count. She was proud of me.
In the summer, she took water from the horse-trough
and made me wash.
In the courtyard, she favored the others.
She held Timaeus in her arms
and bounced him till I burned with jealousy.
When she took the others into the house
and put them to bed,
I stayed in the courtyard, staring up at the windows.
She sang lullabies to them.
I picked up the heaviest rocks I could find
and threw them as hard as I could.
She was my mother. Not theirs. Mine.
But as soon as the others slept,
she came back outside.
She swept me up on her shoulders
and I rode her like a horse. I dug my heels into her
and clicked my tongue —
she gripped my ankles
and we galloped.
Once we were in the barn, she held me in her lap.
She squeezed my feet.
I kissed her. Sometimes I bit her.
She said I was her warrior-boy, her little Thracian,
better than all the others.
We slept curled up together.
There was one night —
I don’t know how she knew —
but the storeroom was left unguarded.
It was a moonlit night: I remember that.
The sky was pale, and the stars were dim.
We stole over the grass without a sound,
and opened the door by inches.
There was no one but us.
She took a loaf, split it, and poured oil over the bread.
She opened a jar of crystallized honey.
She showed me how to dig into it
and take out a great knob,
which I sucked off my fingers
slowly, making it last.
My time with my mother was like that,
golden and secret
and over too soon.
2. HORSE
This I remember clearly: we were playing a game:
Lykos’s game: he called it Do-What-I-Do.
He circled the courtyard,
arms like wings.
We panted to keep up.
He grabbed a branch of the olive tree —
Some boys couldn’t reach that branch,
but I could. We swung, kicking our feet,
jumped down, took off:
whirling like leaves, darting and scampering,
following Lykos the leader,
hopping on one foot, crossing the courtyard —
into the shadowy house.
I don’t know where my mother was that day.
She would have stopped us.
It was cool inside, the shutters drawn.
I wasn’t allowed in there.
Even Lykos, the master’s son,
wasn’t allowed in the andron.
That was the best room in the house.
It was for the men, for drinking parties.
There were couches along the walls,
Lykos scrambled up on one:
“Do what I do!” Then he leapt
from couch to couch —
they were strung with rope, those couches,
cushioned with sheepskins,
loose and springy.
He slipped
skidded
onto his bottom. That meant
we all had to slip.
We were
bouncing
and falling,
leaping,
shrieking with laughter,
trespassing,
asking for trouble.
That just shows how little we were.
We didn’t know when to shut up.
Then I caught my breath
struck dumb.
A wonder before my eyes: a horse on the wall.
A whole horse, large enough to ride,
and it was flying.
You could see the wind ruffle its mane,
the sinewy legs pranced, the nostrils flared;
and it had wings,
luminous
spread like the wings of a swan.
The beauty of that horse was supernatural,
and all around it was the sky,
dazzling blue, with winds and clouds.
The horse kept galloping, galloping,
soundless
staying in one place.
You’re thinking I was stupid.
But I wasn’t. I’d lived all my life in the barn.
I’d never seen a picture.
And the man who painted that horse must have been like a god.
He knew how to draw legs, and set them in motion,
how to make wings that fanned the blue air,
how to paint the moist glint
in a horse’s eye.
I had to get up close —
this impossible thing.
I had to touch it.
I stood on the couch
and pressed my hands against the horse.
I thought it would be warm. I thought I’d feel the muscles
under the shining skin.
But the wall was cool and rough.
There was a cry. Galene —
the master’s wife, mistress of the house —
stood in the doorway. She screamed at us. The others scattered.
She seized me by the arm,
yanked me off the couch,
and slapped me so hard
my head swam.
“I’ve told Alexi —
I won’t have that slave brat in the house!”
Slave brat.
I fled. I raced for the courtyard, the olive tree;
I scurried up like a squirrel.
My mind was cut in half.
One half echoed: Slave brat. Slave brat.
The other half-mind was fixed on that horse.
I wanted to see it again.
3. KNIFE
This memory is blurred,
painted with a dark glaze.
My mother: standing in the doorway of the barn —
the light behind her. Twilight.
The air smelled of thunder. She was holding a knife
and a bowl of ashes.
There was dread in her face. She told me
she was going to cut
marks on my arms. Tattoos. The Thracians wear tattoos.
She warned me: it would hurt —
I was afraid of the knife.
I said so. I said no.
She moved quickly. Next thing I remember
I was flat on my back
struggling —
She was pinning
