Eaton Hamilton

painting by Jane Eaton Hamilton 2013

The first few paragraphs of my short story “Acrobat.”

Acrobat

Giving me away for your mama was how it had to go, Jet, I couldn’t rock that cradle. (You said, Mama?) All of you a drum over blood, hot in a rocky shell, so protected you burned against asbestos, keeping your fires tight and banked.

That night coming into you from behind I wanted to hurt you. You thought it was later but it was that night, me inside you too hard and gritting my teeth, grinding myself up into you till you came from it like a tic, squeezing around me. In the place I was touching you were highly polished, a susceptible pink. I wanted to hurt you–I was in love with you.

Your mama would tell me leaving was clinical, a simple wound, a parting of skin, a small surgery. But your mama never stood with you under a piñata. You said, Mama? You told me to dream in colour, running the loops of my brain in blues and yellows.

Jet, I called it love and read all your bumps and valleys. I was willing. I took you in the bathtub, I took you up against the purple hallway wall. I said I was never tired. You were the one thing I had a story for. You weren’t pretty but I called you beautiful, Jet, you with the name that made me think of a vapour trails, that name you wore like jewellry, like the one earring in your ear of a lizard or a spider.