Not because of grief, either, though grief is everywhere, hanging from the rafters, pressed into your ribs, crawling under your skin with each breath.
It is because you know your son’s handwriting, and the sight of it here, under rotten floorboards in a ruined cabin your daughter-in-law used as a punishment, feels too deliberate to be chance.
You sit on the splintered floor with the envelope in your lap and the metal box beside you.
For a long minute, you only stare at the word on the front.
Mama.
Nobody had called you that with tenderness in days.
Since the funeral, every version of your name had sounded like an inconvenience. Eulalia, when relatives wanted to know whether you had somewhere to go.
Señora, when lawyers and clerks pretended not to notice you were the one still wearing the same black shoes
