Pieces in places

Dear Mama:

I lost your ring in Nicaragua. Handed it over to thieves in bandanas with machetes, my fingers swollen with the sticky heat, I almost couldn’t get it off. I don’t remember if I cried or not.

I threw your shirt out in Brooklyn when my roommate gave me bedbugs. Blame was easy to assign, paranoia was not easy to suppress. You were there for most of it.

I can’t find your life story, the handwritten memoir I wanted as a Christmas gift the year after I graduated.

I gave away the painting you made for me to a boy who wanted something to remember me by a month before we broke up and I never saw it again.

I miss all these pieces of you. I wish I could find them in the corners of the world they’ve been shuffled to, summon them back, hold them near my chest.