Cauldron Anthology Issue 9: They Who Were Spurned cauldron9finalproof | Page 16

leave with a dried mouth. I couldn’t ask her to wet the roof of my mouth.

I stood a bit further from her. The lone lioness, always sitting solo, bit whoever she liked. I
couldn’t get any closer.

I wanted her not to breath the bad air, not depend on crumpled banknotes, not stick her
rough tongue (in some stinky mouth, not cross her pearls near some yellow layered teeth), not pull
down her skirt to hide her bush every fifteen seconds. I didn’t want her to howl at the ones she
fancied and say screw the money, nor her doors to squeak as they open. To go up on stage (just)
because she’s bored, and dance, and hypnotize everyone despite dreary air. (Her dance, when she
viciously threw her head back from her knees, strangled her breasts with her arms, rolled over and
stood on her four limbs, blew his mind with the circular motions of her hips, synced to any rhythm,
and stretched her waist that only she knew it was sore.) She was huge when she moved. The world
would abide if it saw her. Her dance was famous. As it was the dance of exploitation; of animals, of
the black folks. Every single move was of the ones we eat and wear their fur, the ones with a contract
of slavery to their masters’ names hidden in their pockets. Only I get caught up in the vagueness of
her moves. Only I know the meaning of the way she slides her shoulder over, or wiggles her belly. I
can read the symbols of her worship ritual exclusive to pathetic souls, write hundreds of pages about
her, give lectures on her moods. My eyes, don’t mind the bugs and rodents that jumps on her, rather
focus on the elegance of her chasing every one of them one by one, the movement of sweeping fin-
gers. Life stops when she runs her curled hands through her wrists, up to her chest, then down from
her belly. Only she knows the limit. How much can the middle finger enter into panties, owning
everything on its way. She enjoys the carnival of pleasure in the tiny piece of flesh, stuck between two
fingers, and shows nothing to no one. What’s left on the cloth is hers. I would wash my hands there.

Her meat-based diet prevented her legs from holding any fat, I got stuck in their tightness. So
thin, her waist and thighs were almost the same width.

Her fingers were tapping on the counter, like a solemn lion who disliked grasslands, therefore
hunted alone in the savanna. Relaxed, aware of the hours she could spend without paying a dime
in her free zone where no bartender ever looked. From afar, I held my hand up over her mustache
that burst right under her nose. Maybe a twitch, a disturbance. I saw the light pink on the insides of
her fingers. I moved a couple stools further without being noticed, and stopped right beside her. My
words were there, I was going to start talking about the wave of her curls. My similes were there, to
the colours of autumn. I was going to talk about her garden, her cage, rotten food thrown over her
ears, her hay bed, and three times a day. Bloody, the one she doesn’t fancy. Her days stuck with the
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Cauldron Anthology