My mother kept her guilt in an obsidian bowl on the kitchen table. Little palm-sized orbs, like golden hearts. She would burnish their smooth skin every morning with a mix of cautious breath and a tablespoon of pure cane sugar. On warm days she would pick one sphere of guilt, cut it into thin slices and place a sliver, lightly dusted in tajin, in each of our lunch bags. I once traded my portion of guilt to another child for a dark chocolate square of her shame. We started an emotional barter economy. A cartel dealing pure, uncut feeling. For this, I was punished. Forced to polish the thirty-three mirrors in our home until I could clearly see all our reflections at once. My fingers cramped into tight commas, pink knuckles burned raw like pieces of broken coral.

Like a phantom limb or suspicious mole. It started with snakes. Then heights. Public speaking. Antique furniture. I added moths last year. Their velvet wings, deviant little oil paintings. This year it is secrets. How impressed they are with themselves at parties. That coy smile and half shrug of their tiny clandestine shoulders. Their smell, the last breath of a dying star.

But I have no apprehension of Death. When he comes for me with his serpentine skewer, I’ll plant my lips on his chiseled jaw, hard as ebony, white as bleached whale bones. Thank him for sending me somewhere I can finally face my fears, with nothing more than calloused knuckles and the wisdom of the great horned owl.