I was sitting at the kitchen table, mother pouring out tinctures across from me. My feet swung in the chair so far from the floor. My pink dress flowed around my ankles, it was my favorite. Mother made it from scraps of a old party dress collecting dust in her closet. the beads looked like lady bugs and i had named each of them individually.
I watched with excitement as she filled the tiny bottles with the dark purple liquid. As she would screw on the top she would site a incantation and blow a black mist from her mouth that wrapped around the bottle like a snack, turning into hard wax.
"Mama"
"Yes peony?" Her pet name for me, my eyes being the shade of the peonies that grew from the weeds in the yard.
"How do you make the black stuff come out of your mouth?"
"Aah its a charm, mama says a incantation and the charm blesses the tonic, making sure to heal all the boo boos"
