But sneaking over to that long black car, laying my baby down on the warm leather back seat, and leaving him behind unleashed a billowing grief that overtook my every cell. I didn’t realize this at first, so dazed was I from hunger, so accustomed to enduring, to doing what needed to be done. When I clicked the car door closed and walked away from him, I did so almost as if I had set down a mere stone. Or if not a stone, a puppy then, or a hatchling, something I had needed to care for then pass along, a practical change of hands like the sale of a piglet from the sty or a sapling from the
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