by Elizabeth Torres

Elizabeth Torres is a poet and essayist in southern Minnesota with work in AGNI, Ecotone, Pleiades, and elsewhere. Visit her at elizabethtorreswriter.com

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To make up for everything, I save bits of beef fat and render it. I place it over medium low heat, add water. Stir gently with a wooden spoon until all turns to a gold one might gladly drown in. I line my strainer with a non-bleached filter and pour the tallow through. Friends, it is pure. To this, rose water and lavender and chamomile. In the mason jar it cools to cream, and I tie a ribbon to the neck. Friends, I press this to my face with the tips of my fingers. I repair scars this way. Sun damage, wrinkles. No cow has ever profited from my attention. I finger the fat as my daughter recites her prayers at night, all the words jumbled together. I jump in to straighten them out but she says she can do it herself, and I know it’s true, that what’s between her and God is nothing I can untangle, though when I was pregnant, I imagined myself some sort of Old Testament priest interceding on behalf of my child, bringing bits of animal to the altar. I imagined the consistency of my faith could protect her. That is, could stand in as her own. Now, I yearn to shrug off the burden of her soul. I fear she might someday disappear. I fear what I’ve done. I’ve killed the fattened calf and rendered it. Am I not radiant? I can stay here as long as I need to. Where’s the harm, if it helps me sleep? Last night I took my daughter out to the prairie, and when she heard a bird call and asked, “What’s that?” I didn’t know what to tell her. Some part of me thought, even then, that it might all be too late.