after Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope
She wonders about the double-knit and giant-collared denim blouse that they gave her to wear on this planet of twin dawns and sunsets—why no dun tunic like the ones worn by the men, so neatly cinched at the waist with a belt? Why no puttees the color of camels? Why no Bedouin chic for her, too? She wonders as well about this galaxy: how did it get so big with so few women? But she says nothing. She does exactly as the man with the dark beard says. She drinks the blue milk at the white table in the domed home with her pretend husband and her pretend nephew, and as she’s been told to do, she wears a thoughtful, world-weary look at all the talk of robots and condensers and such. No matter the solar system, she knows she’s good for only listening.
He has too much of his father in him is the last thing she says—and not enough of his mother, she wants to add, though she knows nothing about either person. With Tunisian sand still in her ears, she flies home to Surrey, unaware that she’s already been turned into nothing but a smoking cage of bones meant to free a boy, the future savior of so many mannish worlds.
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Kevin Grauke is the author of Shadows of Men (Queen’s Ferry Press), winner of the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in such journals as The Threepenny Review, Fiction, The Southern Review, and Story Quarterly. He’s a contributing editor at Story, and he teaches at La Salle University in Philadelphia.