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S P E L L B I N D for Dante on his fourteenth birthday, with apologies When the surgeon handed me the squalling package of your life I acquired a mother’s imagination. If you were out of sight for a minute I would see you forever tucked-up in catastrophe’s specimen drawer awaiting classification. I was not unlike the serial murderer who sees in one bright face at the shopping mall ghastly potential, joy seamed equally with brutality, which of course it is. In my brain the cold light love triggers flooded on. Unseemly fear-rehearsing grief. Amulet worry. Fear to forestall fate? There was no incubation period. A baby is such pretty meat! And all around me the starving world pressed in. The nurses, who I could not trust, busied themselves with their secret plotting, needles and feigned interest in my bowels.  Barresi pages:Layout 1 5/12/10 1:44 PM Page 81 You were so necessary already that if I should lose you, I would die howling naked, having first torn out my hair and stuffed it into my mouth like weeds. A mother is a goth queen, dark by breeding. How could I resist the veil? The heart’s mad hammer-stroke falling? Fifteen years, and the cost of everything is still everything. I know I scared your father that first day. In our dim hospital cell lit by my eyes surveying him, he had to wait until Demerol delivered its knockout kick to lift you free from my arms. Then he carried you to the tower-room’s one windowlight and sang some gentle magic into your glowing face, a father’s spell to always protect you from me. Dante, I swear, I only pretended to be sleeping!  Barresi pages:Layout 1 5/12/10 1:44 PM Page 82 ...

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