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.
liezel graham 
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