Meds

by Erin Dorney

The tiny gems were mine, glinting, singing my name from the wooden case and my fingers dove in effortlessly, in the middle of the gift shop, in the middle of the berry farm—while dad was getting ice cream for everyone I was supposed to be in the bathroom. I carried a fistful of those stones in my jeans pocket, outside to the bench (next to the corn maze, across from the billy goat mountain) and asked mom can I have a quarter to feed them? No, but dad snuck me one and a handful of feed pellets later I snuck rocks into that goat’s mouth along with its food. I ate my single cone and watched her and thought about those colors in her belly, how the gems might clink around and touch each other—mix together. I fed her rocks and thought about those guts, filled with moonstone and jasper and fool’s gold.