In Arms

Picked the guns up

I remember the first time I held my gun. They had wiped the police station five villages away clean of life, leaving behind smears of blood in patterned designs on soil and cement, animal designs and pictures of birds, and they looted the guns from the storerooms and they stole the bullets in sacks. They had a bonfire that night with laughter, victory in ears, and all the guns were thrown into a pile like a construction of sticks. They ushered us in, the new recruits, wide-eyed and wondering, throbbing in my guts, and we stood single file, a stringed necklace around the pile, eyes blinking, ghost breaths escaping white in the cold.

"These are your arms," Comrade Ram announced and it sounded like a coronation, "These are the weapons that belonged to the other side. Now they are ours. We have taken them, and now we shall use them to wipe out the evil tightening its grip about our throats. Rise, Comrades, Rise!"

He picked the guns up, one by one extending them firmly to our faces.

"Long live the Republic! Long live our Brother!"

I took the stick in my arms, arm in arm, and was surprised at its weight. I cradled my weapon, feeling its corners, feeling the newness, the coldness, my daughter of wood and metal. It was one-eyed and when I looked at it, it looked back long and hard at me with its circle of darkness. When I let it rest by a tree and turned around, I felt its eye on my back, its single black eye unmoving, unforgiving, watching, waiting, daughter-in-arms.