Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Colette Jonopulos
Her Boy
…it is good luck to be the one who bites into the plastic
toy skeleton hidden by the baker in each rounded loaf.
—Ricardo J. Salvador
Day of the Angels
She’s woven a shawl of white; egg-batter bread and
marigolds ride her hip in a basket saved for today. A cousin
offers her beer as she spreads a cloth between the graves,
careful not to step too close—her grandmother’s presence
thick in this field of headstones, the crow-like caw of the
old woman shrill above chatter, a gnarled finger used to
remove curses, now a breathless tap-tap on her shoulder.
Bread is portioned out; her boy bites through thick crust, his
teeth caught on the plastic skeleton, talisman that brings
luck, toy that might save him from her emptiness. She
tells him of his father, the sister he never met, props photos
against candles, flat images like ghosts caught in between
worlds. It is like this, she says, the stubborn ones stay behind.
He thinks her words come from the beer, those sleepless nights
rocking in front of her altar, hair spread like wings over the
ground. He shoves the skeleton into his pocket; tomorrow he
will remember little, except the flavor of plastic and how a
candle melts onto paper, the wax slow like remembrance.
Crab Orchard Review ◆ 109