Marlene doesn't understand about time. She acts like she does and she's so dreamy and serene she seems like she understands about everything. I love my daughter but sometimes it seems to me like she understands shit. When my hair went gray--or really I guess when I started noticing my hair was going gray, I felt old. I was in the kitchen scraping old maple syrup off the counter when Marlene came in. And I said to her, Marlene, I'm getting old. And she looks at me that dreamy way and says, we all are. And I said, shit easy to say when you're twenty-three. And she says, Time goes foreword --that's how it works. We get older. But you're still beautiful. She said "we get older" just like a damn herbal tea commercial. But still, I thought, I have a kind daughter.

Now herbal tea commercials make me want to kick the TV screen in. Marlene's still kind but the dreaminess has been shaken all out of her. She slept under my skin, cradled in my hips. Now we have this shared loss, like the shared skin we used to have. The baby's gone and the space she used to take up burns our nerve endings.

I don't care about this sack of blood and air and thinning bones I carry around. My hair falls out, my teeth fall out, my skin becomes like dead leaves. Screw it. That's how it works. But I will bend this mother fucker, this straight foreword moving time. You pass through a day and a door locks forever, you can't go back. But I will bend time into a knot that ties me and her together. She laughed like splashing water.