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Alexandra Seiler

Consumption

"So, my dear, do we have a deal?"

She stands in the chill of the subway station. She
stares at the devil, and he smiles back. She closes her eyes
and plays her life in bright technicolor on the cinema
screens of the backs of her eyelids, wondering if, after all,
she can say yes.

She started to sing when she was barely two,
humming half-remembered snatches of tunes to herself,
composing childlike lyrics that emerged into the air and
then dissipated, immediately forgotten. As she grew older,
she learned to glow with pride when adults did double-
takes and glanced down at her and said, with some
surprise, that she could really sing. Her first-grade
teacher nicknamed her "the music box," because even in
class, even in conversation, she sang. She did not ever
really stop.

She grew even older, blossoming into the awkward
self-consciousness of the preteen years, and she realized
she should probably be embarrassed about her singing, the
way it intruded into conversations and the everyday lives
of other people. She closed her mouth, but the songs were
still there, bubbling beneath the surface, waiting
anxiously to be allowed out into the air.

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