I know that she has sold everything she owns, that cousins and uncles have emptied their empty bank accounts, that she dreams of her baby in tuxedoed satin, flawless in an open casket, a cross or blood red rose tacked to his fingers, his halo set at a cocky angle. I write figure on a piece of paper and push it across to her while her chest heaves with hoping. But Jesus isn't on this payroll. I work alone until the dim insistence of morning, bent over my grisly puzzle pieces, gluing, stitching, creating a chin with a brushstroke, I plop glass eyes into rigid sockets, then carve eyelids from a forearm, an inner thigh, I plump shattered skulls, and paint the skin to suggest warmth, an impending breath. I reach into collapsed cavities to rescue a tongue, an ear.
Lips are never easy to recreate.
And I try not to remember the stories, the tales the mothers must bring me to ease their own hearts. Oh , they cry, my Ronnie, my Willie, my Michael, my Chico. He was on his way home, a dark car slowed down, they must have thought he was someone else. He stepped between two warring gang members at a party. Really, he was trying to get off the streets, trying to pull away from the crowd.