wildscape. literary journal

The Lost Elephant
by Sarah T. Jewell

Even elephants grieve when a mother
dies. It is hardest to forgive myself.
Where inside me is the perfect daughter?
When I found her, I screamed my grief to deaf
walls. The perfect daughter was dead. I had    
rehearsed this moment, to be more prepared,
but one is never ready for death’s sad
entrance. I woke then in the bardo scared.
A gravestone stood and mother’s name in place     
of my own. I lifted my wet head off
a pillow, a Rorschach blot where my face
had been— my tears in the shape of a lost
elephant. Are you my mother? she asks
each passing animal, studying tracks.

about the author // Sarah T. Jewell