Afterward, your father wants to convict you of murder, to charge you
as a killer. But what he does not realize is that you are only sixteen,
and when you went skinny-dipping three months in, the round pillow
of your stomach glowed in the river like the shell of an oyster,
except you were too young to handle the pearl.
In England two centuries ago, they crowned a young man as a saint
because he prayed over a child ill with tuberculosis, at death’s door,
but who soon recovered. The doctor reminded you of this before
the anesthetic was administered, mask placed over eyes,
the monitor flickering its slow tune in the corner,
white walls, fireflies making love so loudly outside in the dark
that every pulse of light stemming from their bodies
was a synonym for heartbeat. The syringe slid in as smoothly
as a lover trying on another body, your red hair spread over the bed,
spilling into the sheets, a vein throbbing in your left wrist
as if grasping for the baby’s hand before it was suctioned out of you,
and your father, pacing outside in the hallway,
wondering how to convict his own daughter
of something she was too young to understand.
