by T.R. San
Whenever I knock on Thuzar’s door my knuckles hurt. It’s teak, the real good stuff, no polish. Her ghost daughters, when they’re done with serving up burnt ice on the homefront concrete, crack rocks on the handle and play pretend egg chef. I swallow it all down everytime and they love me for it. Thuzar hates that they love me. She’s nice about it at least, when she only hates something of someone. She asks me how I do it, how I rein her blood in from the grave with just a couple tongue cuts, and I say you gotta learn how to pretend everything is from the moon. And how not to swallow the now- moonrocks. Don’t all mothers do it? Thuzar says there’s no such thing as ‘all mothers’, oh I love you, come here. I go there —and in her arms I forget that mothers exist and are mythical. When I leave with a bellyful of lunch from Thuzar’s kitchen, her daughters come up to me with a manja-coated string. Oh, for a moonkite? Thank you. Thuzar shouts all the way back from the table at them, shrill as glass– you don’t love right! I’ll beat you both back to life! They giggle– maybe because she equates life with death, like a mother, or because she acts like the dead aren’t the most knowledgeable about love– and dissipate into her throat. I think her tongue bleeds then, in some way. Next time I show up, knuckles at the ready, I’m greeted by a welcome sign that I know is just for me, because there’s rat blood flowers decorating the pots of the e’s and the o, and because no one else has been welcome past the door since Thuzar’s daughters died. They love me all right– they all love me right. I swallow moonstuff. I’m allowed to knock.
Thuzar’s Door is a magical realism flash about love as motherhood and grief, then motherhood and grief as sacrifices.
- T.R. San
About the writer:
T.R San is a writer and poet. Their piece, Thuzar's door features in Erato's second issue, Sacrifice
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