Acupuncture By Charlotte Reed - Get a Free Blog

clearly how he came to free his brother,
but Romulus remembered Remus’s roar
of delighted shock, remembered their ragged
grip on the other’s shoulders as they refused
their grandfather’s crown and put an end
to the war games. Remus had lived.
A city was to be built.
Each brother selected a hill and waited,
unaware their gods were to make chess pieces
of them yet again, and when Romulus counted
double the vultures sent to circle Remus’s hilltop,
something broke between the brothers.
Th ey bickered, they brawled, and Romulus set
to building his city, to appease the gods and leave
behind the tense hours on the hilltops. Th e wolf
in Remus came out then, and he snarled at his brother,
growled at the workers, destroyed meaninglessly,
and when his twin asked why they could not
make a city together, Remus snapped his jaw
as if to bite, and the smaller and skinnier man
backed away. Th at night, Remus leapt over his brother’s
wall, and Romulus forgot all but his city,
and killed the traitor with whom he’d shared an
embryo, a womb, a river, a wolf, a fl ock, a war.
magus ~ 55 ~ mabus