Baby Stanley

Mummy had fallen asleep and little Stanley was snoozing peacefully in her arms, warm and cradled and eerily still, he looked like a pale faced china doll. Sat cross-legged on the rough, stone floor I examined my hands in the soft, dim candle light. White as milk with bones protruding, gnarly and dry like autumn branches, I felt saddened and weak. The cold brick of hunger rattled beneath my ribs and called out to me in pain. I looked across at Stanley and felt a pang of annoyance. Wrapped up tight and pulled in close his face gently grazing my Mother’s bosom, he knew nothing of the troubles I held. Always fed, nurtured, and gurgling helplessly and happily with his shiny rattle, he took away my place as the baby. Sometimes I dreamed of digging small unnoticeable holes in my brother’s gas mask, Mother would need me then, I would be her little baby and poor Stanley would drift away down the river and be lost in the reeds of our memories.