The house’s weathered “For Sale” sign sways over the brown remains of the lawn. A cold wind licks at my bare feet. The crying grows louder.

I enter the basement where the infant’s body lay for months, abandoned in death as in life. An icy breath suckles at my breast.

Jayne Martin’s work has appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, Blink Ink, Literary Orphans, Flash Frontier, F(r)iction, Sick Lit, and Hippocampus, among others. She is the author of “Suitable for Giving: A Collection of Wit with a Side of Wry.” Find her at injaynesworld.blogspot.com and on Twitter.