ERIN ROSE COFFIN What Descends into Flesh

ERIN ROSE COFFIN

What Descends into Flesh

In Western Indonesia, a woman carves an infant-sized hole in the trunk of a jackfruit tree. A grave, to be filled with the body of her child, gone before he cut his first tooth. She prepares his corpse, its bones still soft as the bark of the patchwork limbs. She will not be allowed to attend the funeral, his mother now the milk-white sap of the ever-growing monument. The tree feeds the baby, the body feeds the tree, and the soul, untouched and holy, drifts up through the tropical air.

In Charlotte, my mother sits in the garden of St. Gabriel’s. She whispers to the wall where her own mother rests, an urn set in concrete. She fingers an inherited rosary, speaks to the Virgin Mary, asking about pain, wants to know if leaving is like a long blink, or like suffocating. She leans in, waits for an answer, but what more can we know? Silent, she feeds no one and no stone feeds her.