A Prayer for My Daughter
the hospital doors, past the decontainment corridor, and join the spaced-out, silent queue of children and their parents. Anya doesn’t cry, and Ida is thankful for this. Crying sounds too often like it does at work; people gasping for breath and life, scrabbling at some semblance of air. Anya clutches Ida’s hand through the mesh and rubber of her suit, and Ida wishes she didn’t have a job that meant she had to be exposed to the virus most days; that meant her family trapped in suits at home; that meant she couldn’t touch her daughter if she cried. “Sabrina Mizal,” the doctor calls, and Anya steps away from her, disappears into the room. What does my daughter’s hair feel like? she wants to ask the doctor’s gloves. Does it feel like the silk of my favourite dress back then? They are walking home, bumping slowly like astronauts in their white hazmat suits. Her daughter’s hair is beautiful, curled up in her helmet, so much like Ida’s own. I don’t touch you because I love you , Ida wants to say. She knows at night she will feel the half-remembered silk of a dress slipping through her fingers, and she will imagine, for a brief moment, that it is something far more beautiful.
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