when the sky was beginning to fade, my mother would look up deep to the skies. there waiting, her neglectful companion. hung across the evening sky like a cloud lost among the stars: only the dancing partner of the tides a big flaming ball of cheese the curve of my mother’s smile. a wandering partygoer ahead of the oncoming night a subtle impression of itself dim from the curtain of light deep in her heart there was yearning beyond expectation more than the sum of its parts she saw her entire life waiting for her and only by night she could be a lonely child, a wayward adult, a tired mother, all in need of something more than themselves waiting upon them, theirs and only. “nothing more than the sum of its parts” she would say. “it’s just enough to know” that she’d seen it.