Lessons in Vampirism
by Sophia Mae Hiatt
Vampirism is a victimless crime
when I am eight under a Buckeye tree,
when Lydia’s lavender-butter skin is snagged
when she shows me how to blot the blood with a leaf.
I stall as she drops the evidence
and lilts away, humming,
as if one day we won’t be twenty two,
with our own lighthouses beaming towards different ports,
without search of flairs or tin can telephones.
As if her blood, glistening on the waxy leaf,
isn’t a fairy egg, a farewell present given three years early.
As if I don’t need that blood from that leaf -
as if that’s not the point of it all!
I cling to the leaf with its stiffening, beaded eye, as
rigor mortis sets in,
dust to dust
rusting from the August.
I sink behind the Buckeye,
place the metallic red-green-brown on my tongue and
suck for dear life
and never stop