ADLAI

He wasn't my brother.

He was my mother's son.

Technically, he was just a small pink stone,

an ancient carving of a child

ceremoniously bathed in blood

and laid on a metal hospital tray.

He didn't warrant naming,

but she figured a still birth is still a birth,

and anything that's born deserves a name.

I guess if I spent that much time

growing something in my gut,

I would want to name it, too.

Even if I held on so hard that I turned it into a bone.

She named him Adlai.

In Hebrew, that means "God is Just."

She really believed it, too--

that God was just,

and that he took her son because it was

part of his plan.

I think she was too old to have another baby

and her body wrapped around him like a boa constrictor,

made him hard and cold.

And I think it's just as well

because I ended up that way, too,

hard and cold as a stone,

and I made it out of her alive.

The casket was very small.

It was closed.

It was deep red wood with a glossy finish.

I don't remember why she chose it

over the other tiny caskets.

Maybe because it looked so much like him.

About Frankie Romano:

Frankie Romano is a 20-year-old hypochondriac with a really pretty bicycle. She likes holding those little red plastic "fortune telling" fish, because they always curl up the same way in her hand: fickle.