“When one twin died, the one that lived got all
the strength of both,” their mother Gladys liked
to say, and that remnant of a son would pluck at her voice,
the little dread in every pleasure, and Elvis
would quiver on the stage of her thoughts, and she would kiss him
on the lips, and he would kiss her back, and let her
take him to her bosom until it felt like the other son
joined with this one, and Elvis could leave her again,
carrying the seed of worry and decay away
that never had a voice. On camera, then,
he would seem to cock his head to listen,
shock of hair over one eye. He would take
Dolores Hart into his arms, and we could almost
hear the dark child sigh in its dream of being born.