Patrick Burton

Margaret

The baby’s stomach rose and fell as he slept in Margaret’s arms. Despite the howls of the city—the sirens, the squealing of rubber, the screams—despite all these attacks on the silence clinging to the grimy walls of her apartment, the child did not wake, nor did the involuntary rise and fall change its rhythm. We know what you did, the walls seemed to whisper in a voice only Margaret could hear. We couldn’t see. But we know. Yet, for all their whispers, Margaret was smiling. Deep in the comfort of sleep, the baby gurgled, and she giggled at the sound, her laugh an incongruous brilliance that crackled and smashed itself bloody against the dark stillness of the walls. And as every inch of the beautiful boy etched itself into the back of her skull, Margaret’s fingers, as they often did, fiddled with the heart-shaped locket whose metal chain hung cool around her neck.