Holy Oil

by Laurin Becker Macios

That August I put three drops on my tongue. Dangerous: do not ingest. They bloomed into answers as right and objective as clouds offering rain. The way Danielle said I just can’t wait to walk outside into that storm and meant it, her craving for cleansing undeniable. I put three drops on my tongue and it was like that. All uncertainty left me, all memory of uncertainty left me. My mind was a pillow I could rest my head on. All memory of pain left me, but I wasn’t numb, I was a vessel bristling with everything imaginary, everything real—rocks in their miraculous formations, the ocean lapping the shore like an uninhibited lover. It came in a tiny glass bottle, clear as crystal, clear as the liquid inside, you’d almost think nothing was there, and you wouldn’t be wrong—the nothing’s power was in its nothing. Like air had been prescribed, but the drops were real—plink plink plink. The absolving: a violin playing itself in a sculpture garden I remember vividly but have not seen.

Laurin Becker Macios is the author of Calling Me Home, a Young Adult verse novel forthcoming from Holiday House in 2026; Somewhere to Go, winner of the 19th annual poetry award from Elixir Press; and I Almost Was Animal, winner of the 2018 Writer’s Relief WaterSedge Poetry Chapbook Contest. Her poems have appeared in Green Mountains Review online, [PANK], The Pinch, and elsewhere. The former Executive Director of Mass Poetry and former Program Director of the Poetry Society of America, she earned her MFA in Creative Writing Poetry from the University of New Hampshire, where she taught on fellowship. More at laurinbeckermacios.com.