Cauldron Anthology Issue 9: They Who Were Spurned cauldron9finalproof | Page 18

that arrived and got off at random stops. Without a sign of resistance, he accepted the growing mush-
room in his lung, thinking dying is this easy, easier even than praying.

She took me to her den, in which there was barely a bed. Sweat, sourdough and secretion,
strong all around. Her sheets already creased, gathered at one end of the bed. Fiber burnt my cheeks,
the last sunny days of the fall. She dropped her body on mine, flat. Tango, deep and classic. Her lips
locked on my lungs, my neck, and down my back. Her naked feet on me, step by step. Tailbone,
spine, and axis. As if she was picking flowers, humming in the meantime. I didn’t know the language
of her cure. Her tongue washed my smooth flesh, hairless after chemo. She stood up sometimes, like
gathering the flowers on her lap. Some of me must have been left on her tongue. When she couldn’t
take it anymore, she spit my deaths at the side of her bed. She smashed them with her heels and got
back on me. I liked the sound of her song, I loved it even. In it chorus I got stuck, then back to the
beginning, then to the end. She reached and grabbed colourful dolls, with skirts, pants, capes and
scepters. Some crowned, some naked. She fit them all in her two hands, now almost in trans, she
reached and placed her headdress on her mane.
That headdress! Its darkness!
When placed on hair (even though hair is dead, or straight) its wires sent power to the skull.
These intertwined wires, dried intestines and ink from veins. Leaves covered the wires, they were
forever lined according to the tempo of the applause they took. Some wildflowers too. Right side
of the headdress had a half antler, and the left side had the jawbone of a horse. Beavers’ teeth in the
middle, and night’s baby at the top right (night’s baby was a cotton ball covered in black cloth) a crab
claw at the bottom left. A piece of skin stretched from the crab claw to the antler at the top (the skin
was of human, yet one who failed as a human, one who dove right into zebra herds, ran through
jungles (except of Africa) and knock teeth out, cut heads right under manes), and the widest part of
the skull was on her forehead, the source of the cure.

Evil’s sharpening and sharpening until the knife disappears, and the magic of its vanishing
caused healing.

I laid there. Did not move a bone. I felt the blood that filled my mouth running down to my
pubic hair. She had prettier things in her thumbs than just nails. Her steps felt like the joy after work
at a factory. The ever-burning light of the limited hours of freedom but until the next morning.
When the daily flow of life could entertain anything, her father chose to come home from copper
doors with melons in his hands (how lovely was it to have him at home, rather than his mistress’s
house). My mind was blown away by those who share a bed together and pray for wealth, the need
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Cauldron Anthology