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,
who paid the Ferryman? I protested,

Was he serious? Asked to see it again,
but he smiled, said It’s my fee, and left.
I never saw him or the obol again.

There were no relatives to name her,
so I chose Sharon, having looked up
the story, named her after the boatman.