The Evil Eye

It comes oozing out of flowers at night, it comes out of the rain if a snake looks skyward, it comes out of chairs and tables if you don't point at them and say their names. It comes into your mouth while you sleep, pressing in like a washcloth. Beware. Beware. If you meet a cross-eyed person you must plunge into the grass, alongside the chilly ants, fish through the green fingernails and come up with the four-leaf clover or your blood with congeal like cold gravy. If you run across a horseshoe, passerby, stop, take your hands out of your pockets and count the nails as you count your children or your money. Otherwise a sand flea will crawl in your ear and fly into your brain and the only way you'll keep from going mad is to be hit with a hammer every hour. If a hunchback is in the elevator with you don't turn away, immediately touch his hump for his child will be born from his back tomorrow and if he promptly bites the baby's nails off (so it won't become a thief) that child will be holy and you, simple bird that you are, may go on flying. When you knock on wood, and you do, you knock on the Cross and Jesus gives you a fragment of His body and breaks an egg in your toilet, giving up one life for one life.