On a shelf in a house that has not seen a party in a very long time, sits a small blue bottle, glass, purchased from an estate sale, received as a gift, originally found at an old-time apothecary, passed down from a grandparent. Origins, unknown or misremembered, don\u2019t matter. It is there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The shelf is crowded with books, pottery, shells from the lakeside, a plant that doesn\u2019t require much sunlight to live, a curling photograph of a baby in the arms of a woman on a long front lawn. Dust collects around the neck of the blue glass bottle, the cork in its lips drying and crumbling in the winter air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bottle is a collector\u2019s item, and also it collects. Intangibles float on motes, which the bottle aspirates: memories, emotions, zeitgeist. The potion for renewal, regeneration, rejuvenation, re-everything. The bottle sucks them down, right through the cork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Distilled into ash at the glass bottom, these intangibles wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They wait across wars and protests and pandemics, across genocides and injustice, across isolation and forced labor, wait for that Rube Goldberg moment when the bottle shakes with the earth\u2019s groans and tips sideways. The cork disintegrates into a pile of flakes, and the contents of the bottle float out on a zephyr, released into the world of newspaper, pink flamingo, purple sky, to suffuse with changed particles whomever is standing there beyond the front door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
_________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wendy BooydeGraaff\u2019s short fiction, poetry, and essays have been included in<\/em> Welter, <\/em>Stanchion, Slag Glass City,<\/em> Phoebe, and elsewhere.<\/em> Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, she now lives in Michigan, United States. Read more at wendybooydegraaff.com<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"