Alexa Daskalakis

The Bone Lantern

She doesn’t say she’s been here before. The frost does.

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I remember where the river bent
before the map was drawn.
There was no Boston, only frost
and the soft moan of the pine.

We marked our doors with ash and thread,
and mothers stitched the light
into corners of the home
to keep the children warm.

Men came back with blood on them,
or didn’t come at all.
We didn’t cry for either.
We boiled the water. Stoked the fire.
Buried them without their names.

I had a name then
no one remembers now.
Not pretty, not soft —
but it held.

It held like a root in frozen ground.

I learned to gut silence with a glance.
To carry grief in twine.
To say “yes” with lowered eyes,
and “no” by never saying a word.

We braided time.
We spun memory into cloth.
We whispered into wool
and dared the wind to listen.

Once, I buried a child.
Once, I kissed a man who didn’t return.
Once, I watched the frost take the cellar wall
and thought: he never saw it bloom.

If you ask me where I’m from,
I won’t say Boston.
I’ll say:
Where the lanterns swung from bone.
Where we burned words for warmth.
Where the wind still knows my name,
though no one else remembers.

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Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. The narrator is a fictional, ancestral voice. Any resemblance to real events or persons is purely coincidental.