By Erin Keaton.
The sun will never set, the moon will never rise and the grandfathers won’t stop dancing. They are waiting for the youth to come. Their arms and legs pump and sway. It’s a blur of white and red. I cannot stop seeing it, even when I close my eyes. They tell me I’m The One.
I am bleeding like a fountain like a sprung leak like I am sure to die; so much goddamned blood. It’s all over my thighs, my legs, my ankles my feet. Not even in a pretty way. Not like handmade silk gloves. Not like a milk bath. Not like satin sheets over her naked body. No. This blood slicks ugly in uneven streaks and wild smears, thick clumped rivulets. A crime scene not produced by Hollywood; the pictures, glossy 8 x 10s strewn across a steel table, barfed out from a manila folder marked EVIDENCE.
The grandfathers grip my wrists, uncannily strong. They look breakable yet I cannot break them. They whisper encouragement in between glances at the vase, checking its fill. They tell me I have such a gift. They tell me I must have many boyfriends, I’m so pretty. So pretty, they say. A dirty hum.
I’ve filled four crystal vases so far. Rose stems easily hidden in their viscous bellies if they were ever to be used as intended but they are not. The grandfathers take them. I have no choice. They lay in wait, mouths gaped, gums bared. The old wives’ tales say to rub it on the skin for a quick return to youth and so they do. They paint their faces tribal; eyes poking through like clouds in the crimson. They rub their bodies with it, greasing the skinny poles of their arms, legs; wrinkled watercolors. Their white hair fringed scarlet. The air fills ripe with the smell of hot metal. The atmosphere, rabid with hope, swirls with their hysteria.
The grandfathers bat their eyelashes; rub their crotches, light things on fire. I squat above another vase while they pound their gnarled fists, yelling for more. Another is filled and the grandfathers release a primal cheer. I am helped to stand and it is taken away.
I see no end in this.
Blood streams down my legs while I wait. I watch the grandfathers put their hands into the vase’s belly, almost spilling it with their frenzy. The white of their fists churn the red, a fish belly orgy. Others rub the blood from my legs, some finger the spigot, getting it fast and fresh. I am trapped in the fight of hands and fingers, each of them looking for the promise of what has been so long lost.
A new vase comes. I squat again. The blood drains. The moon never comes and there is no sun to set. There are only the grandfathers who want me to continue to produce and I am so pretty, so pretty, The One.
