by Austin Reece
The bough not smooth, the leaves not green, she said she was trapped in
an old woman’s body. By mid-autumn, the soft bells of her voice ceased
and snow began to fall and flock the trees. Her eyes were two caches of
absence, yet still blue beneath her earth-brown hair. Before dawn in the
riverside house, she drank coffee and sat on floors in rooms with little
furniture. In the afternoons, two stained-glass horses shone brightly in
the kitchen window. The house sat on stilts with no back steps and the
river was inescapable when it rose and stretched its legs.
It came to light the previous tenant had broken the tiny white bones of
his infant daughter, was arrested, and evicted. She couldn’t nest and she
couldn’t sleep. She took medication the size of bird seed and ate less and
less. She cried and hit herself in the face. She smoked from open windows.
Then one day, while she listened to the river sing its seething, she
discovered the thrall of the Sirens’ song. How they, like her, searched in
vain for the child lost to darkness, a sweet girl, not yet born but already
loved. With wispy curls of hair and eyes unbothered by the need to remember,
the baby waited for its mother.
In late November, with the garden sparkling of ice, she entered the river,
her ears and mouth unstopped. Down there at the bottom, the rock
meadow bloomed with algae and whales floated overhead like clouds. She
soon found the white cradle with its intricately carved posts and spindles.
She lowered herself down slowly and let the baby drink the life from her
heart. She kissed each eye shut and smiled. Dragonflies, whose heads are
all eyes, circled the silver surface, while the moon’s fevered face glowed red
beneath the black cerecloth of night and slept.
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