Sea Room

Child Burial

Child Burial I was ashamed to think of anything while the others remained blank with formality and sorrow, but the casket looked small as a lunch pail left behind at a picnic ground. A breeze lifted my hair, a swirling I enjoyed when riding carousel horses. Our circle was immovable and closed, a severe crescent stiff as snow fence. To show respect, I chose the frozen posture I learned at school, when lining up for vaccinations. I shivered as the family stared, measuring my size and seeking features, for somehow I resembled what was lost and my presence suggested a queer rivalry. It was difficult to keep still as the day walked on, the shellacked box mirrored swooping birds, the whole world spinning on it. It must have been the hour when I daydreamed in class because I could not follow the relentless algebra of stones, dull rows like chalkboards repeating a hard lesson. I preferred the hothouse lilies which smelled like Karo and candle drippings. Then I tracked a distant cloud, a grey funnel of rain that dangled like a stocking miles away, but I did not look again at death or see what it saw about me. The priest closed his book upon a snowy tassel, white as the glare of that moody winter, white as silk bunting I'd seen at the mortuary. It was not the same color as those ponies, polished for summer and tethered nose to tail like all the days ahead. 12 ...