by Kate Hutchinson

One day these years will be known as the space between silence and enough.
Nick Flynn, “Saint Augustine”

I have no memory of when I became aware I was one—
singular, apart, not-mother. On that day
did I feel fear or exultation? These
arms, legs, eyes, mine to command through the years,
while always, too, circling back, my will
tethered to the womb of home. It would be
years beyond her death before I would know
the depth of solitude. Singularity as
my truth. From that time forward, the space
around me has thinned in its vastness, the time between
being of her and being without her a silence
of continuous loss, and
yet still—in its capacity to forge a life—enough.

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