I dreamt that I must swaddle a baby—
that his head was as fragile as an egg
and inside me was the seed of terror
smothering my heart with the deed of this body
the paperwork all there
that suffocating ownership that he
and I both shared—
mine and his, belonging to no one but each other.
Where was my mother
as I stared into the blank black eyes
of this child
his face too bright
like a pink planet tipped back into the embrace of a star?
Where was my mother
to teach me
how to cradle the yolk inside the skull?
How to live with this new object?
She was scared as well,
I know, alone in her hometown
she burnt my leg on a clothes-iron
and tried to say sorry a thousand different ways.
Just like the bee sting at the bay house
how the smell of palm-tree breeze and linen
carried me through the pain.
And now I forget the exact taste of it in my mouth.
I must now carry this body
through his life,
through his pain
in a dream world where the sky
is crumpled paper and rain and fire
and my child will be buried in snow
before I wake.
Norah Brady is an actor, writer, and space enthusiast living in Boston, Massachusetts with two cats and many, many books. She feels most at home at Latin conventions or walking through the woods, searching for the unknown. Her poetry and short fiction works can be found in Rookie magazine, Write the World’s 2017 collection: Young Voices Across the Globe, and the Ekphrastic Review. Her work has also been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.