Sharon's Mouthful

Ben Bruges

In the aftermath, the doctor asked me

if my hands were clean. I could only nod,

still in shock. Nursing can be tough.

The doctor said There's something

here, something in the mouth,

too tiny for my sausage fingers.

It was that moment after birth,

I’d just started her breathing,

she was vulnerable and alone.

The mother was still,

dead, her energy subsiding

into dark’s breathless silence,

like choking,

but in all senses, all…

closed.

Try, here,

the doctor said urgently,

please.

I had things to do, blood to clean,

but he insisted. I gently eased

my finger into her tiny mouth

hooked the object out—

a tiny, round, tarnished silver

coin it looked like, some head…

and that was the last I saw it,

the doctor whisked it away,

leaving me alone to clean up.

I chased him for his signature

for the statement of death, demanded

to know what it was. He looked serious.

An obol. Then, at my puzzled expression,

Don’t you know what that is? I still

didn’t get it. He said, patiently,

The mother’s dead, right? So how,

did the baby cross back over the Styx,