I have filled a gilded bowl to the brim with tears. I allowed salt-water to dribble into it, watching the water level rise until the surface tension of the liquid trembled the slightest bit over the rim of the bowl. I waited a the span of a heart’s beat (ba-bump) before I plunged red hands into the still-warm liquid, watching it slosh and spill over the edge of the bowl.

The effect was instantaneous. The tears turned a pinkish tinge and I wiggled my fingers in the water, not sure what the emotions that welled within me were called but only knowing that they rose wickedly, enveloping me in a heat that flushed my cheeks and made my vision swim. I laughed, and the sound was callous and detached and, in all honesty, not very sane but I was okay, since my hands were being washed of my sins and my transgressions even if the rest of me was filthy-filthy-filthy. (Pontius Pilate, oh, I wash my hands of this? Reconciliation that is borderline sacrilegious? Or a baptism centuries too late?) I pull my hands from the bowl and marvel at the sight.

The skin of my hands is perfect, pristine, pure. It is white and unmarred until, at my wrists, it blends into dirt the color of horror made manifest.