Death Baby


Death Baby

Holes,
   holes in everything, even bones,
   even minds become soiled doilies,
and the flightless wings
of blighted memory
are blood-rusted stubs,
   not bridal lace.

Long ago, I must have been
a sorrowful, leathery ape of a child,
clambering in the moss-grown ruins
of my mother’s madness.

On the last day that I had a mind,
    I remembered walking
between hot, copper columns of sunlight,
meeting my father’s bones
   and my brother’s ashes
   and answering their questions
about my charred, failed life.

On the last day that I had a body,
   a crone with black smoke wings
   instead of arms
left a pearl-colored child,
who was as lovely, silent and stupid as a fish,
in a bundle on my front porch.
    I knelt and cradled her
   against my stammering heart,
and I rocked the death baby
rocked the death baby.