Читать книгу Saudade - Traci Brimhall - Страница 14

Beg, Borrow, Steal

They fingerprint the severed left hand

at the police station and all the officers

start carrying prostheses in their pockets

in case they discover my daughter alive

but handless. Everyone makes a spare —

the carpenter whittles one, the dressmaker

stitches one, the coroner pickles one

and experiments with electricity and leeches.

All of us plant offerings to lure her home —

tattered bassinet, puppet theater in a mannequin’s

hollowed chest, a suit of armor posed midstride

as though some uncanny conquistador resurrected

himself and continued his search for El Dorado.

I plaster walls with pictureless posters — MISSING:

my reason for living. Last seen: pink as life and wailing.

Tourists return from their searches shouting

premeditated epiphanies, claiming they found proof

of life and the postscript of a ransom note requesting

old opera records, or else. My tongue inside the licked

envelope, detective and clue. I barter for what

remains of her, ignore the warning in the first half

of the ransom — All action leads to suffering. So does all hope.

At dawn I find not my daughter, not her other hand,

but a word as light as terror parting the trees.