earth, tasted it on her tongue. If she could swallow the bitterness, she would taste the essential thing: this love for her son, fragile, almost painful, physically present yet at the same time soft as butter — this love that eclipsed all other feelings. A love they would never have been able to cut out of her. A love that ripped her apart from inside, that pinched her with every move she made, a thousand times worse than the stitches.
