Blood Honey

Apprehended and held without trial, our friend was sentenced: brain tumor, malignant. Condemned each day to wake and remember. Overnight, a wall sprang up around him, leaving the rest of us outside. Death passed over us this time. We’re still at large. We’re free to get out of bed, start the coffee, open the blinds. The first of the human freedoms. If he’s guilty we must be guilty; we’re all made of the same cup of dust— It’s a blessing, isn’t it? To be able, days at a time, to forget what we are. * These numbered days have a concentrated sweetness that’s pressed from us, the dying man most of all. Today we eat brunch at Chester’s, poached egg on toast, orange juice foaming in frosted glasses. He remembers the summer he packed blood oranges, stripped to the waist, drinking the fresh-squeezed juice in the factory straight from the tap. He cups his left hand under his chin as if to a faucet, laughing. He is scooping sweetness from the belly of death —honey from the lion’s carcass. We sit with our friend and brood on the riddle he sets before us: What is it, this blood honey? *