Lost Mementos by April Salzano

My ex-husband has the napkin with the ankh-shaped blood stain
from the tattoo on my back, pre-scab. It was the late 90’s
when jeans still covered the place modern girls decorate with black
tribal marks and esoteric Asian phrases, poorly translated.
Now it is an old-school tramp stamp, marking the time
before I stopped believing in anything eternal.
The curved loop of the cross formed a target
for the anesthesiologist’s infinite needle to pierce a portal
into my waiting spine so I would not feel my first son fly
down the water slide of the birth canal, enter the world
through a door that slammed shut behind him, stitched
closed for another four years. Industrial-thick maxi pads lined
mesh hospital panties to promote healing what should have been
a welcome wound. An ex-boyfriend
has the Band-Aid from birth’s antithesis before I started
college and contraceptives. Just a dot of blood in the center
from an IV for local twilight that cost a hundred
dollars more than the cognizance that came anyway. Shame
did not pull out early before shooting its load deep inside me.
My mother-in-law took everything back after the divorce—sports
scrapbooks full of news clippings, records of records broken. Her son
always could run faster than anyone else.
She took football jerseys with retired numbers, the lettermen’s
jacket. No one wanted the dog tags issued even in peace time.
They still dangle in my jewelry box, a name punched in
like Braille by the teeth of a typewriter. They blink their silver
subliminal message: nothing we can identify will be forgotten.