Pearls

She knew something of death.

 

a.

The mason jar was the only appropriate container. It was not just any mason jar, however—of course not. This was the mason jar that lurked in the corner of the shed on your grandparents' property, that always held the sparks of fireflies caught at night, that was emptied of their bodies before dawn by parents who pried it from the fingers of your sleepy child’s hand so you would not know death. The jar that one summer held the dry body of a giant moth that you swore was the size of your face but the next summer was only the size of your fist. It was this mason jar of summers past that you—that she, rather, set out on the steps in order to collect starlight. It was old light, it was true, dusty and weak and tired and it tasted like death in her arms. It was wonderful. She was old enough to know something of death by then, bitter and precise like good wine.

 

 

b.

It was at night with its dusty death-wine of stars, however, that she felt the youngest. She felt like she had skin still satin smooth and unblemished, bones close to the surface, eyes wide and straining against the ancient primordial dark of all the ever was or will be. She’s been through two of the four blood rites the make women out of girls but she feels as pale and unblemished as the throat of a calla lily. She lies in bed and clutches her arms until she bleeds under the surface, small dark bruises rising with the sun. She wonders if fairies have to bleed to grow older, or if they just wake up one day with misshapen pearls under their tongues and spilling into their palms. She sleeps with strings of pink pearls twined in her fingers and braids so she’ll never bleed. Blood was life which was death which was wine which ought to be marbles smoother then pearls between your lips and filling a jar to overflowing.

 

c. When he leaves, there are dresses all over the floor, skirts flipped up in obscenity. They are hiding the roses that feet have crushed, and she sits on her bed with her head in her hands that rest on her knees. She can feel him in the hairline cracks waiting to form on her skin. She can smell the roses he destroyed, the dried dead perfume of that witch who is supposed to be in the woods. There are no woods. There are no hands on shoulder blades (white like the bones of birds), no wings, no notice of death. Blood on the sheets but no notice of death, just her pearls fallen out of her hair and scattered about the floor, under the chiffon and the lace, to lay with powdered roses.