He buried his own son in the riverbank.
I only know because Seth told me.
Thirteen years old, mother vanished.
Angel he called him, because he was,
tiny as the palm of his hand, squirming,
too young to cry, just mew piteously.
He cradled him against his naked heart,
zipping up his jacket to protect from cold,
and vowed the men in white coats would never steal
the only thing on earth that loved and needed him.
He had no way to care for an infant so small,
barely able to provide for himself except on his knees.
I don’t know how I know it, but I do –
he prayed that day,
prayed to a god he’d never believed in before or since
that by some sympathetic hormonal magic
his scarred and battered breasts might give milk.
But the only miracle born that evening stopped squirming
and mewing as he started off for the convenience store,
wondering if he had enough pocket change for formula, bottle, diapers.
He panicked, pressed lips in a first and last kiss to puff life,
two mangled fingers pressing in futility against a chest
thinner than they were, until passerby stares snapped him back
to a deeper panic that they would never believe someone like him
hadn’t smothered the infant just to be rid of him, so took off
blindly running back across the bridge towards home,
to kneel on the banks of the sacred muck and slush,
digging a grave with his own bare hands
as something shattered inside forever.
He knelt endless minutes trembling before unzipping himself
to lay the tiny bundle of his own flesh and dreams in the pit
and cover him over with blankets of wet silt.
He never told me about that day, or about the girl
who Seth claimed he never saw again.
But he still startles himself awake,
drenched in cold sweat and urine not his own,
to ask me before he’s quite awake if I hear a baby crying
before arising to wash us both and change the sheets,
cradling me against his still naked but unmiraculous heart
and murmuring comfort as he rocks us both back to sleep.
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