Mother, your absence makes me ask,
of what do I subsist?
Increasingly it feels
the past did not really happen
and only I exist.
My strange fate within—
laughter in a tunnel of doubt—
is coming to resemble
all this life without—
cursed for being dull,
necessary and safe.
You represented this.
Life presented itself as you.
Now I represent the whole of things.
The cat wails.
But nothing sings.