A Chorus of Trees Page: 24
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Surrogate
Mother, when I was small, I asked you what had happened
to that boy-you hadn't meant to mention him at all, I think-
my other brother.
You grew quiet, looking like a plant that's drunk
too much water. He was somewhere else, you said,
with God. I, too, became quiet
as I felt my task take shape-to give him what you,
by your own admission, did not-and my ribs
were heavy with purpose.
I admit that I've thought about him too much.
But Mother, it's time you admit that
God is a metaphor
and heaven is vast but worth less than a child.
It's time you learn that your son didn't die.
The clot that you passed
was not his body, and the weight that left your stomach
was your own breath. I know this, Mother, because
I harbored your child.
While you receded into ritual and hymn, I lent him flesh,
my father's Roman nose and olive eyes and strangely large feet,
your lungs, the bones
of your ear, your short limbs. I suspended him in adolescence,
traipsing through mud and twig, and I taught him your nighttime songs
and how to yearn,
how to be forgotten. Even now his thermal shirt smells of incense
and Marlboro reds. You ask, can spirits have smells? But I ask,
what did you give him?24
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Lyons, Renée Kathleen. A Chorus of Trees, thesis, August 2010; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc30485/m1/29/: accessed April 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .