Sylvia’s Son Layla Lenhardt I was wrapped in a bad dream like a towel, wet feet on linoleum. I was too preoccupied to see the cracked blood, to hear the silence until I was kneedeep in your tomb. Sometimes, I dreamt you were a baby being born, waking to a pain that was not yours, a motherhood I never had. It was always the same, the air was metallic when I woke up. You were there, sleeping slack-jawed like a skeleton on my makeshift mattress, for what would be the last time. I didn’t know there was something insidious living in your ribcage, quietly sifting through the cracks, waiting for spring so it could spring. I still wake up screaming, “please crawl into my mouth, you can make a home in there!” I saved your beard shavings in a porcelain egg, I no longer call my mother. The tin can on the other end of the string is silent and rusted. I put crystals everywhere to try to see your fleeting reflection, to know that I’m capable of remembering more than the warmth of your blood on my hands.
73.
