What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison

To Put Things Right

51 to Put things right What I saw first was an elephant rising, and though the sight was glorious, it was not half so decadent as other feasts offered up that day—women robed in flame wishing through air toward men in hats as tall as I on legs as tall as father who held hoops through which the women sped before arrowing, violent and graceful as phoenix, into a pool and streaming out, one, two, three, four, five spangled flyers from one, two, three, four, even five corners of the cornerless pool, into our thick applause—so that I let go her rising and fed my eyes to gluttony. But it is that first sight I would sip up had I to choose just one of my lives to live again. The first crunch of sawdust beneath my feet, her knees. Popcorn stalled between my hand and mouth. There was meal enough in the sight of her rising. First, just her on her knees, skin char-gray under those glares— even her naked hairs showing—and then her rising; the earth shifted forward under the press of her knees, and I tilted with it, we all tilted forward, so she could rise ever so slowly (we heard trust in her heaves of breath), and we were not breathing; an elephant stumbled, we understood, as anyone might, we swallowed; and then her rising, and the world put right, and women, robed in flame, wishing through air. ...