Eartheater

by Dolores Reyes

To watch her fall quietly into a gaping pit in the graveyard, in the back, where they bury the poor. With no tombstones, or plaques. A parched mouth that devours her near the reedbed. The earth, open like a wound.

Pain: the yellow of garbage, of fever; or gray, sheet-metal-gray, sickness-gray. Only pain seems never to die.

There isn’t much I can do to stop the earth from being the enemy, except eat it. This strange earth I’ve taken from a graveyard neither of us ever stepped foot in. She’ll stay here and I’ll carry some of this earth inside me. So that, in the dark, I can know my dreams.

I’d started noticing a special trait in people who were looking for someone, a mark near the eyes, the mouth, a mixture of pain, anger, strength, and expectation made flesh. A thing broken, possessed by the person who wasn’t coming back.

I knelt down among the plants, parted the massive leaves, and put the bottle next to the others for company. There were plenty of blue ones. No blue was the same and no earth tasted alike. No child, sibling, mother, or friend was missed like another.

The world must be much larger than I’d imagined for so many people to have disappeared in it.

I listened to him talk but had nothing to say. It bugged me that it was blood that pushed him to look for her, not the girl. Any girl. He was the law, that was his job.

I stroked the earth, which lent me fresh eyes and visions only I could see. I knew how much the crying of stolen bodies ached.

The words seared my throat but I didn’t want to speak them: words can also stain you.