Forty years later and I’m screaming, beating fists against my skull to go back and have

just a little while before the strangers come and take her. A dead zone within which

one might delicately cradle hope, stroke its downy head and croon to it.

A brief limbo that never happened, no moment to catch my breath, before all hope was lost.

I departed too. Better than pressing hope between my palms until it popped out to wetly bounce across the kitchen tile, leaving its snail trail of guts through the unswept dust. I peeked around the corner at acceptance. It turned and shrieked at me like the Banshee.

Hug your knees, bow your head. Rock beneath the covers in your bed. Chant:

       my Mother - is not dead              my Mother - is not dead 

Written in grey matter like marks of punishment lashed one hundred times across a blackboard.

The strangers took her. I cannot know the color of their ties or the set of their somber faces or the dull murmur of their respectful voices. What violence the sound of the zipper on the body bag when a pale and pockmarked hand pulled it shut over her chemo-fuzzed head.

I could have planted a kernel of acceptance in the black earth of her absence, had I seen her off.

A seedling that would have sprouted into an annoying little bush, always underfoot.

I would have tripped on it daily and gradually gotten used to the fact of it as it

grew to shield me during my dark times.