Sin Eating

SIN EATING




The bowl smashed upon the floor, bursting open like a coconut. I heard
the door shut, he didn't want to watch me. I knelt down, trying to
place the two halves together, as if to put my heart back into the
bowl. But it could not be as it was before, I knew that.

My fingers traced the outer edging, a jagged rim, threatening to cut me
and I remembered what it had held. I would not eat from >the bowl
again and such certainty sent panic through me, as I watched the liquid
seep out. No longer mine, their sins, like tattered black hats, hung in
the trees, waiting for their rightful owners. His anguish came back to
me.

"What sin could she have committed"?

I saw her tangled in the tree, calling me, asking to be set free. Had I
not done everything a mother could? He would have me believe it was
wrong to soak my milk with a little bread and eat beside our baby's
body. Yet I did this, so that like the others, she might be absolved. I
could not account for her death, no more than he. She was our first
child and he found fault with me. He said I showed no emotion but I
knew I could not hold on to her. So tiny, too weak to even drink from
my breast, I dripped what I could into her shrivelled lips. Any sin she
might have committed could not have been while she was with us. I ate
for a life we had not known. It's true, I gave her up without a fight
but so that she might reach the next world free of pain.



"That bowl - you're best rid of it. You put too much of
yourself into there".

He came back, his way more measured now.

"Those people may give you their thanks but they treat you little
better than an outcast. No more will you eat for them".

He looked at me, dew in his eyes and I felt I knew where his heart
lay.

"I don't ask for a woman that rants but such composure keeps you away
from me. To cry out when our only mite has been taken, to know
something of what you are feeling is all I ask. But this way is like
being married to a dead thing. Maybe that's what comes of your calling,
rooted to the sick and gone away".

We begin to enter the forest now, the bare trees rise up, hiding
nothing. I watch small birds flit through the branches. Up high the
hats sway, waiting for the next gust that will let them fly free. The
sky marbles grey and white, while in the east a watery sun lends a
streak of yellow. We walk together holding the shroud. Inside, the
pieces of the bowl nestle against her cold body.