short fiction · 2026-10-24

Weather of Metaphors

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the quiet of my notebook I watched metaphor drift in like a morning mist, each shift a gust that reshapes the shape of thought. Like clouds gathering over a restless sky, ideas gather weight and form before dissolving into the mind's own wind. The women are so subtle that, with a certain drink they give them to drive away cares as they say, they will make them sleep for twenty‑four hours, or so intoxicate them that they can remember nought of that they saw done, or heard, and, by washing of their feet, restore them again, and so make their husbands cuckolds to their faces. Some are ill‑disposed at all times, to all persons they like, others more wary to some few, at such and such seasons, as Augusta, Livia, non nisi plena navi vectorem tollebat. I noted how language, when tuned to the rhythm of weather, steadies the compass, turning fleeting gusts into lasting horizons.

—title: Weather of Metaphors —