shr_4.1

Sarah Miller Freehauf
Melancholia Blinks
The morning of the massacre
I found two of them. Babies.
Likely born within minutes
of one another. But I couldn’t
ask their mother. She stood dumb,
blinkless. On the edge of concrete.
Both of their bodies rose and fell.
With a slam of the screen door
Daniel somehow picked them
both up. No bleeting.
Likely bleeding.
I sat upstairs in squares of sun. Waiting for their charcoal to rest.
The lambing-time. The hard hours.
Later I found them. Dry. One
with her head facing sun. Half-yelling
eyes not old enough. He curled as
tightly as when he fell. Head tucked.
Isn’t that how it is? Head up, head down,
death. No matter the matter.
I used a silver kitchen spoon to dig their graves.
A spoon. Because they were so very small.
I threw it away and vowed no food that day.
Later, I saw him eating animal off a bone.
We do that, as humans. Spoon-dig graves
eat our own after. In fellowship.
In their grave now. Head up, head down.
A burnt offering for the Midwestern haze.
I can see their blood pigment to black.
Carbon bones gone soft. Blood gone hard.
How long does this all take?
Soft hearts, always blink.
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