She stares in wonder as the soft melon head
cracks against hard wood floor
and does not
split.
Rushing--
a half second too late--
from the chair where she settles
exhausted
each evening
to watch the child
battle sleep, damp black eyes
half shut,
hands curled like angry birds
on the crib rail,
thrust open in surprise
as he plummets down.
She watches in awe,
as she did at
his birth,
the hard wet helmet head
pressed like madness
against her
They tell her
she does not remember
the splitting of bone,
the spurt of her blood
a savage alphabet on white bedsheet.
and she is quick to give up
memory,
the welling of pain.
When she tells the story of tonight--
___the child overcome
___by gravity, the head
___plunging down--
She will say
she does not remember
seeing him fall.
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