The Banquet on the Hills
Her hands tremble as if someone else's ghosts had borrowed her bones. Pupils blown wide hunting or hunted, who could say. Her head floats, hollow as a bell, and her heart gallops toward nowhere in particular, just away. Eyes mist. Mouth deserts its duties. Tears get stuck not in the ducts but in the throat, a tide of salt she can’t swallow. Something cramps beneath her ribs, solar plexus, they call it, as if the sun could live in such a cruel place. There’s nothing much to do, she knows. Nothing glamorous about it. Just breathe like a square. Inhale five. Hold five. Exhale five. Hold. Repeat. Survival, after all, is just pattern recognition dressed in ritual. She’s been here before. Of course she has. The nervous system keeps score long after the heart has tried to forgive. She already knows how this movie ends, same plot, new actor. A boy with good shoes and bad intentions. A well-spoken mouth and a script rehearsed for girls like her. This one lives on a hill. Of course he does. ...
