my mother’s name is Ann Elizabeth.

i have been motherless for nine months.

forty weeks in which i, soft mammal body, have once again been shaped into something other than what i once was.

an alchemy forced upon me.

i have been away from my mother for forty weeks.

i long to be mothered, for the presence of a ‘mothering’ to hold me.

the saying of it, the allowing of these words to escape my capable and sturdy-booted mouth is a thing that i feel i should not say.

beyond the first wounded days nobody really wants you to say this.

but there is a relentless mourning hunger, a chasm, within my days.

my mother’s name is Ann Elizabeth.

i have been away from my mother for forty weeks.

this is all it is.

this is what it is.