The Murmur of Bees

by Sofía Segovia

you leave a place or say goodbye to someone, and thereafter, you feel the existence you have left behind is frozen by your absence.

Because the perfect course of action can only be seen in hindsight, which is why we fill life with so many should

life offered no guarantees, and regardless of how many plans had been made, events outside of one’s control could easily spoil them.

Now they felt devastated, understanding—for the first time, perhaps, and firsthand—the true meaning of death: that there is no going back and that anything that was not said in time would never be said.

She had been a mother and . . . What does one call a mother who has lost a child? Amputee? That was how she felt. Now she was an amputated mother. How does one resign oneself to that? When?