Phoebe

The tall grass and brambles pull at Phoebe’s skirt; she walks on, oblivious. She’s often seen here walking through the field as the sky softens to dusk.

She hums, a secret song barely audible. It sounds like distant wind chimes, but there is no wind, not even the whisper of a breeze. The world holds its breath, save for some small animal that senses her approach and scuttles to a safer distance.

Phoebe’s feet pass over jagged stones set like teeth in the once fertile ground. They nip, greedy, at her soles. Still she pushes forward, heading toward the sumac thicket.

She slips through the branches and once on the other side heads due west. The sun fades and moon climbs as she crests a small rise. A weathered gray shack squats below, its door sagging on tired hinges. To open it would release a moan, but she's not interested. Instead she veers toward the jagged creek and the low stone fence below. And there she stops.

At her feet six small mossy stones, planted in a row, mark where she buried her babies. Each one dead at less than a year old.

She’d loved them singularly. Their chubby cheeks and pudgy feet. Their grasping, grabbing hands. And their lips. She’d gaze at them for hours as they slept, finally waking them to nurse at her breast. That was heaven. Knowing she alone could love them enough to keep them alive. That is, until the next one came, more perfect than the last. She didn’t have enough to give to two, so the elder would be wrapped in a blanket, tucked tenderly in the ground, and forgotten.

The seventh baby laid permanent claim to her. They died together in the small shack, tangled together in cord and placenta.

She returns each night, shocked anew to find plump and tender flesh replaced with seasoned bones that no longer reach for her, no longer warm her, no longer need her.