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The Daughter : The Reader by Becca Jensen The end is always the same—dragging home with cracked shoes, bloated, salty lips, and three fresh bruises on her right, inner arm. Home. Even now she hovers round the taste of limes and fish and tales of giants that burn her tongue. How she came to them in a silver boat with scales of rainbow about its sides. How they met her with a grace that is their proportion but she ran for fear and hid for fear beneath a fallen leaf, and when they found her, she spat in their faces and bit their fingernails to the quick. Yet they loved her anyway because she was small and precious and they called her orphan, built her a house out of chartreuse and sand. Then one of them—the one no one liked—ate her boat. After, how they came each hour with eyes bent from sorrow, begging her forgiveness and what could they do? So she asked about her parents and where could she find them until the giants brought her some stories. Her mother was the past and wore hair the color of mountaintops and skin that runs like sunlight. Her father was God and was made up of loss, which made him somewhat forgetful, but mostly he was kind. Then they built her another boat and kissed her in three places on her right, inner arm. |
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