First Mouth

Before the king eats, he watches me eat. Tonight it is white soup; almond, boiled hen, strained seven times through linen; no pepper: black flecks remind him of flies. The bowl, broad enough to wash a baby in, and I am bent above it, allowed the first spoon but never the second, while a page turns the glass and red sand frets through its narrow waist; while the king, not looking at his supper, rolls bread between finger and thumb into six white pills; while I wait for bright ants in my gums, for my heart to miss the next stair. Nothing, until the spoon touches metal sound climbs the handle, strikes behind my teeth. A plain gold band lifts through the cream, carrying one white drop inside its circle. I know the plier-nick beside the soldered seam. I paid nine silver coins for it, one from each month the king found me still breathing at the end of supper, and gave it to the woman at the far table who could peel a quince in one unbroken strip, the yellow ribbon gathering around her shoes, who found me after suppers behind the flour bins, set two fingers beneath my jaw and counted, and once, after the count was done, left them there. The last red grain falls. The king says, Well? I slide the ring beneath my tongue and shape clean around the gold. He bends to the bowl. At the kitchen door she holds two fingers beneath her own jaw. I swallow.