Hers is the voice in my head, the sound in the night, the arms forever reaching, pushing, encircling. What? Me? My life? My choices?

More. My very being. My coming and going, both. She bore me. Carried and contained me, never let me go. The cursed elastic never stretched far enough, the blessed bond never broke. Our ages bled into and through each other, radiant with the heat of devotion, the impossible light of longing, the incandescent rage of possession. Ours was a covenant of frustration. We were each other’s but not each other. Connected but not the same.

I thought it would be ever thus, my mother and myself. It is, now that she’s gone. And it never was.