Emma Sovich Pygmalion Family Portrait The pale boy clutching his father’s hand, the father who clutches the boy’s mother’s hand, the mother whose hands will convulse around anything because inside her a bundle of blood infant and umbilical and afterbirth all should and soon will be outside. Never have statues of the Virgin sweated as this statue sweats for her second child. The boy is old enough to walk and talk, to wait quietly. Soon his father will lift him to a hip, their heads will touch, cheek to soft crown, cheek to shoulder broad enough to be a pillow. They’ll sit, boy on father on chair, waiting for mother twice over to recover enough to nurse. The boy has never seen so much blood. Never blood on his mother. Never on his knees or palms. Just bruises, pthalo blue, a color his father would point out in the night sky after a storm. Bruises that float just under the cool surface of skin or white stone. Now, blood all over his mother’s gown, on her bare knees, on the wild oblong thing once inside her, on the doctor’s gloved hands around it, on her hands and arms to accept it, on her mouth and cheek to kiss it. On the boy, his hand to his sister’s face, his hand on their mother’s arm, but not on their father, who hands his camera to an orderly, shows her how to frame a shot: the four of them, three gory.
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Crab Orchard Review