Earslips

I didn’t always know what a womb was.

When I was young, very young, and learning from Sister Sylvia that the Virgin Mary had a

blessed, fruitful one, I imagined a well-stocked pyramid. And being a loving son with a genuine

love of the Virgin Mary, I naturally extended this attribute to my own mother, who, I gathered,

had died in the bed in the room I was born in.

Then one day the gentle nun whispered low in my ear of my slip of the ear.

“It is not, lad,” she said, “your mother’s tomb whence you received your soul, but her womb.”

Imagine that!

I couldn’t wait to scramble home and search for souls in my mother’s room.

Author of the article

A retired professor of philosophy, Vincent Barry has published stories in numerous journals in the U.S. and abroad. He lives in Santa Barbara, California, with his wife and daughter.For some of Barry’s other stories, see: Tower Journal (“The Joiner’s Tale,” January 18, 2016), Fewer Than500 (“A Late Walk,” March 2, 2016), Apocrypha and Abstractions (“Seduction or Something Else,” March 21, 2016), Bull (“Reading Hawking but Listening to Grieg,” April 2016), and The Saint Ann’s Review (“Internal Damage,” Fall 2016).