Soft, Wild Things

by Lorren Lemmons

Combing the beach, my son finds a baby
deer’s skull, whitened by the sun, picked clean by hawks.
Nubbed antlers protrude from sutured bowl of bone,
and my son traces his fingers through socket and sinus.
I imagine him at the water’s edge, a soft thing.

Once my mother saw a spotted fawn alone in the road.
She carried it from asphalt to weedy ditch, breastbone
to breastbone. She said its heart was racing,
trembling against her own. My mother does not like animals—
the dander, the smell, the mess—but her eyes went wistful
remembering the day she clutched wildness to her chest.

Now, my son catches the jagged edge
of what once sniffed fogged morning air,
drew milk from its mother’s warm, musky body,
against my skin. Lifeless bone scrapes bead of blood
from pulsing capillary, faded ghost asks a heartbeat offering,
unwritten ritual, cell to cell, joining
mother, son and wild thing.

::

Lorren Lemmons is the deputy editor for WRKWNDR Magazine. Her poetry, essays, and short fiction have been published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Literary Mama, Coffee + Crumbs, Military Mom Collective, Motherwell, and other publications. Lorren and her family recently left military life and settled in her hometown in Idaho.

Image: Thomas Jarrand

Image description: A deer skull is scattered with other bones on a beach. Blue water and plants are visible in the background.