Salvage the Bones

by Jesmyn Ward

I wonder if her body feels like it is in the grip of one giant hand that wrings her empty.

She makes no noise, just bares her teeth. Grimaces. Skeetah makes no move toward her. She does not want to share this; he will not make her.

She is a weary goddess. She is a mother so many times over.

He doesn’t need to know that the puppy is dying. He doesn’t need to know that young things go, too.

He makes my heart beat like that, I want to say, and point at the squirrel dying in red spurts.

The house is a drying animal skeleton, everything inside that was evidence of living salvaged over the years.