We had to present proof for everything: My mother was born August 31, 1954. On that day inside the womb of a minute she burst from another woman’s life,
More dark than gray, but not yet quite dark entirely, the stories keep ending as if there were a limit to what any story could hold onto, and this the limit, the latest version of it, looking a lot like the sea meeting shore.
I’d come into the room & try to write a different ending on those anonymous walls. There was less time all the time until time changed. You know what I mean.
In the evenings, we watched Jeopardy. Wore surgical masks once she got sick. Before that my mother sent me to the store for cigarettes all the time. Pack of Salem Lights.
Of birdsongs, I know only three for certain: cardinal, blue jay, raven, though perhaps the last two don’t count—not as song. More call than song. More cry, by which I mean