Heart Berries: A Memoir

by Terese Marie Mailhot

I am leaving your body in the earth, Mother. My words lay still like shadows on the page, but they are better than nothing. Better than your formless looming and the dead men who left you. I lament and lament the beginning until the end, where your red hands are waiting. Did you foreordain heaven before you died? Was I there on your chest, or did you hold me from the door.