It’s still noon, I say. You laugh, chest heaving, light falling like rain onto your face. It always feels that way, you reply. I want to remember you like this: face moon-tinted, ripe with joy. You and everything you left behind: dresses with the tags still attached, birdfeed left unscattered, four chambers of the stillest heart. A body too loud to be contained by bruise and bone. A body unnatural in its stillness and why this body, I wonder, which was strong enough to carry old desires and the fruit of motherhood and booming laughter, why fail now? Like the wings on an airplane or the hands of a caregiver, things engineered to fly or die trying. The closest thing to prayer I know is my hands, your hands, learning to be patient. It’s too early, I want to say.

Somewhere, a bird sings. It always feels that way.

It always feels that way.