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First Wail By Elizabeth Sosaya I want to know what she knew then, on a morning in mid-August, taking her time as if resisting her entrance into life and the east room reddened by the sun's first rays. If we're born with presentiment surely it's stored in a place guarded and shut like a seed closed in upon itself and opening only when every atom knows it's time. I know in the crib, she never woke without a cry, would come out of slumber in a caterwaul of sorrow and later, age three or four, would wander through the house weeping out of her sleep. Yet thinking back on the illness she seemed calm, and I watched how, as she viewed the x-ray, she reached into her purse to apply the lip protector as if this were nothing, as if the spots up there on the screen, her lungs in shades of black and white meant nothing, as if she wasn't concerned, as if she'd known all along that this time would come and another on a late Sunday night taking her leave. She didn't say goodbye then. We could have been strangers watching her take her last breath, so much like when she took that long wet, inhalation before her first wail. © Copyright 2004, Elizabeth Sosaya, All Rights Reserved |
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Document last modified on: 03/06/2005