After Mark Strand's No Words Can Describe It
Say the waking mother's wish is granted and she is, in fact, unwakened. Her daughter is now learning how to climb a tree, how to peel a tangerine, how the impermanence of her father bears no weight on the recurring seasons. Was it loss if there is no memory, no witness? What is in the daughter's eyes that longs for a past that she never had, a future she never will? And what does it matter that on a bitter April evening, for two minutes, mother breathed in tandem with daughter before leaving her with mere language which she now cannot speak?
