It has been so long since anyone has touched it, the fossil of the dead child’s thumbprint has hardened on the surface of the grease. The can belonged to my grandfather, who often scolded us for lathering our faces with hot cream in the barber shop, eating the bubble gum for other children, or kicking over the pail with layers of hair going black to white, the bottom layers so thin, they dissolved in the phosphor glow of florescent light. The dead child must have found this, too. Or this could be my own thumbprint, the child I was being dead, half skinny raptor body, half bird like my cousin who climbed the brickwork to the roof.
