The Universe in a Child's Mouth

The other boys came running the way children run when they have caught someone breaking a rule.

Breathless. Half-delighted with the telling.

Krishna had been eating dirt. Right there in the yard. Fistfuls of it. And when they told him to stop he had simply said no, looking back at them with wide eyes that fooled nobody.

She went to look

Yashoda found him exactly where they said. Crouched low in the dust.

Something in the set of his small shoulders as he turned to face her made her want to get to the bottom of it for once. Not to scold him and move on, the way she usually did with these small daily scenes.

"Did you eat dirt?"

"No," he said. Immediately. Without blinking.