The Chance

by Laura Cronk

The dead have an idea, whooshed up from the earth’s deep caves, gusting from the crypts. Their command: place a daughter on the floor of a coliseum, under the noon sun, under the eyes of a crowd. She will pour a whole pitcher of water into a single cup. The pitcher must be emptied, no water spilled. The cup must not overflow. If a daughter can do this, we will all be saved. Why is my daughter the one chosen? Dancers do impossible things. I pray that my daughter can have the courage of a dancer as she takes up the forbidding jug, mind steady as stone.

I have to watch with the thousands of others. There’s shifting and murmuring in the stadium before the hush. If she succeeds, we live. There will be no apocalyptic end, this end we’ve been crafting together. The dead have decreed that watching the water they sent become just enough will grant us amnesia. Amnesia for borders and war. We’ll forget vengeance and imprisonment. We won’t find temptation in evil men. It will be an unbiting of the apple. We’ll forget money can even be made from death. If nothing else has worked why not this?

We watch her lift the clay pitcher. Her hand doesn’t shake. We watch her tip the smooth spout, see the silver streak of water glinting in the realistic sun. We hear the glugging sound as water nears the top. Vessels always hold more than we think they can, yes? The cup is so small. I watch my daughter try to save us. She and the dead have tried.

Laura Cronk, author of Ghost Hour and Having Been an Accomplice from Persea Books. Member of the Matrix Poetry Collective. Recent writing in the American Poetry Review; The Bennington Review; Iterant; Lit Hub; Poets & Writers Magazine. Residency at the T.S. Eliot House, Summer 2024. Originally from rural Indiana and currently poetry chair for the MFA in Creative Writing at The New School in New York City. Connect on Instagram @LauraRCronk