The Swaddling Clothes In this, she is no exception: Mother Mary swaddles her newborn boy, to help the child recall the opiate confines of the womb and so give in, again, to primal sleep untroubled by any man or beast or fire. In the same way, she wraps herself in red-- simple cloths run through with exquisite threads of her own sundered flesh. Her fingertips, hesitant, entwine above her belly, soft and swollen still with his absence. She turns away her face, her visitors left unnoticed. Let them believe the child came from something purer than themselves, she prays. Let them see a holy apparition in his slumber. She keeps her eyes on him, vigilant: In this, Mother Mary is no exception. One rustle and she’ll scoop the child up, return him to her breast before he wakes with whimpering cries of naive indignation at the snow-white sham of swaddling clothes. Andrea L. Hackbarth
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The Ekphrastic Review
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January 2021
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