Ashes

By Amanda Leal
@dissociative.disco

I remember my own son as a newborn,
centered in the expanse of his crib, the immaculate
pine bars, the tip of his nose burning red,
fists balled to his chest as though I would never
return. I could not bear to hear him scream.
Love and terror developed in tandem
that year, as though I never knew
either—fear of illness, of driving, slowing
at a green light to study the cars that rush
to the perimeter, my son's baby toys bobbing
over his car seat, his plastic mirror,
his giant head drooping like a wet pansy.
I understood that if I died, he would never remember
my voice, as the boy born in Turkey
will forget his mother's voice. In the video,
he suckles the gloved fingertip of a civilian,
the bulb of his nose pink as a clam
pried open, his crusted blue eyes glossed,
balancing the lights of the cameras hung
over his face like moons, this boy eased
out of the rubble after the earthquake.
He relies upon the onlookers to assure him
he is treasured, his tiny body papoosed
between the concrete jaws for days, crying
as I never allowed my baby to cry, in his room
canopied in sunlight, the ceiling that never buckled
upon us, as it entombed the infant. After a hundred hours,
the stranger aligned his torso, the velvet column
of his neck, on their forearm, and slid him
down the tunnel of light, skid marks
of dust on his forehead like a Catholic
ash cross, the grime of mortality.

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Poetry by Amanda Leal. Amanda is a thirty-year-old poet from Lake Worth, FL. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in issues of CAROUSEL, Tampa Review, Poet Lore, and many others.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.