Apricots woolly by the hospital bed, a meal of light. The light falls on my mother’s hands. So much sunlight falls and does not get up but its hands pick up the dark and go on. Things are heavy because we try to carry them. My mother said, “in this lifetime, learn to be alone.” I cut my hair in the mirror, attempt poems about the breakfast table with cereal and figs. Good enough. I pour milk, falling through a shitty apartment, a brief depression. I fall in love, mirrored in satsumas, perfumes and midnight. Not enough. I turn the page but I’m still reading the novel my mother wrote me. The room with the view. The wide sargasso sea. A pair of hands tends me. Loneliness is an imaginary thing, but so is the entire country. You try. There are ceilings you hold up like heavens.