About the Work
A couple buys seeds from a contact they meet over dinner. The seeds need blood to grow. They set up a laboratory at home and tend them with the precision of scientists, documenting the process in the same flat register the prose uses throughout. What they are giving up for the crop becomes clear by degrees.
Story
There are three of us sitting around the sycamore table. Witness to the stillness of the collective, the condiments bare worn labels. Movement is reflected on a patrons glass, between the collective assertion of presence lies the intricate imbalance of stance and soul. My woman, she sits to my left. Her face is painted white, her hand rests on our guests. It lingers there, as we are caught in this moment, she extrapolates her desire through their connection. She had brought me here with a hurried hand, I had followed without question. Little can stop me from being pushed, she is equally backbone and gust. Her friend sits there, he smiles. He is uncouth, ungroomed. His scent is strong, but not unpleasant. Like tobacco, only light, distant. Black ink covers his exposed wrist, it spirals upward into his overcoat. It was raining on the way here, perhaps that is what has dulled his scent.
Have you brought it? My woman asks, her extended hand lingering on his.
I have it, he says, pulling back from her embrace. In his jackets inner pocket there is a brown bag, its crumbled around some smaller container within it. I know what it contains. Its unexposed properties torment me, but I say nothing. Its not my place to, I was told not to speak to the man. I follow orders like an aged soldier, marching forward to wherever my commander wishes.