“You wondering . . . ,” she says, and stops. Her lips thin. That’s the place I see it most. Her lips, which were always so full and soft, especially when I was a girl, when she kissed my temple. My elbow. My hand. Even sometimes, after I had a bath, my toes. Now they’re nothing but differently colored skin in the sunken topography of her face.
The gradual change and disappearance of a mother is hard to bear. It marks our days with greater certainty of what's to come.
