I am not growing older. In fact I am getting younger. My skin may get darker, but not much more than it is. In the future my seeing will be halted, never gone completely. I must see those that I will save. God loves me and wants the best for me. That is why she gave me a husband who keeps shiny jewels in the silverware drawer.

I poured my husband black coffee. I did not include whiteness. I brought the coffee to him with a razor blade on the side. I said, “This is for you in case you need to shave the evil from your face.” I noticed the half of his face with the blue eyes. God took the other façade away. I cannot see anything complete, yet.

My husband wanted a spoon to go with the coffee. Because I was hypnotized by the eclipse of my mind, and practical actions were muted by the inner roaring space winds, I forgot the utensil that stirs around the darkness. I opened the silverware drawer. It was full of jewels from the sky.

“ Do you know the spoon drawer is full of razor blades?” I asked my husband.

“ You must have put them there. Don’t you remember?” he said.

“Why would I do that? I answered this man who was the ventriloquist of my real husband. Those are jewels. You cannot see whole pictures either. I kept these last thoughts to myself. I replied, “I don’t know. You tell me why.”

My husband drank his coffee. His hands were tight around the porcelain cup.

“I see something shining in your hand,” he said.

“What do you see?”

“I am not sure. It is flickering,” he said.

“It is God,” I said.

“ Can I see him?” he asked.

“Yes, you can see Her. She is receding in blood like a ruby. She is beautiful, don’t you think?”

He offered his arm. I pricked the curve where his arm bent when he made a fist.

When I was young my father said, “ No more nuns in this family.”

I told him that earthquakes could happen anywhere. We will need holy women to save the people who want to stand in the gratuitous wind.

My father did not want to hear the crickets dying at dusk. He did not want to hear me. My father locked me in the bathroom. I arranged my black nun’s habit on the toilet seat. I prayed strenuously. Sweat appeared on my vaginal folds. No dry cleaner would be able to remove this apparition.

After he drank the coffee, my husband rubbed his mouth on his hand. He asked to see the apparition. I told him of it when we first married. I removed my gown and showed him. It was then they came for me. The tall women with white wings. They told me I would never see my husband’s whole face. I left my husband sitting at the table with bandages around his elbow. He sat at the aluminum table and watched the wind pick up, then scatter utensils on the marble floor.

The white women took the blades from the silverware drawer and threw them into the rotating bludgeoned sky. The blades became jewels in the crown in the north. The jewels flashed on my husband’s face and made him visible to me in a spark. The aura of the sky heated my husband. He evaporated like white milk in a cup of sweet coffee.

“Swear a prayer or two,” the other woman said, “you’ll sleep again.”

§ § §

Elizabeth writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Her work has appeared in e-zines and print publications including Small Spiral Notebook, In Posse Review, The American Journal of Print , 3 A.M. Magazine, Snow Monkey, Skyline Literary Magazine, the Muse Apprentice Guild., South Story, Outsider Ink, Insolent Rudder, Chocolate For A Woman's Soul II., and Whole Life Times. Elizabeth has degrees in fine arts and education

This piece was first published in INK POT #2 - 2003, a literary journal.

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