I'm walking past the open doorway,
where heat rolls out like a living thing,
past barrels and half-filled troughs,
and hear the forge's bellows sing,

Amongst the ring of hammer and steel,
the clang and hiss, the workshop's noise,
I catch a burst of cherubic laughter
and pause just past to hear that voice.

I see a blacksmith and his daughter,
soot and ribbon, mud and blue.
His laugh, warm like forge-fire.
Her braid come loose, as braids all do.

And something in my chest goes hollow,
not with envy, not quite grief,
but the shape of arms grown empty,
wanting weight, wanting relief.

I watch him lift her up into the air,
tangled hair and torn-hemmed dress,
and feel the absence linger like a Magi's vibration,
I keep standing in, no less.

Is this how Papa felt, I wonder,
alone before the world was made?
Is this what He meant, what He was reaching for,
when He shaped children out of clay?

Did His hands ache the way mine do now,
a hollow that only making could fill?
Did He stand at some threshold of His own,
watching, wanting, before He built?

This isn't grief, it isn't chance,
just a want that's grown from circumstance,
and I don't know where to put this wanting,
so I just watch. I just glance.

Penned by my hand on the 7th of Glacian, in the year 1008 AF.