What if inside this story is another story, just as inside every mother is a daughter—and a daughter
inside her, nested forms reaching endlessly through time.

Like her, I remember the light: daily walks; loose, blowsy sunshine. The sky’s deep purple.

The small, bright world she made for me. The rooms I moved through, hushed and familiar at
bedtime.

Together, they became a kind of knowing—that this was a place in the world, that within their embrace
existed a space for me.

A hole in the ground and a tree in the hole, and a bird in the tree and an egg in the bird, and a
hole—and a hole—

The world-as-holding, where each night I lay and looked into the dark, every moment a luminous
ritual: the hour of brushing teeth, the hour of pajamas. The hour of bedtime stories and hour of
darkness.

And then time’s sudden, terrible magic—a swallowing, or maybe a collapse.

The days poured out in a continuous stream, disappearing as though through a sieve.

That tiny, precious world growing more and more distant, receding to a place I could no longer feel
except as an ache.

Smaller and smaller, until it became a speck and then—nothing at all. A life, unmade.

And the green grass grew all around all around, and the green grass grew all around.