my mother traded her body for a future tense. my mother gave her flesh as ransom for a life cancer held captive. it wants what makes her woman. she obliges. she holds her body the way she has known it one last time and i can see the halls filling up with water. my eyes are losing their salt as her wounds seem to be finding it. she finds pain and it finds her worthy. i don't know what god finds her a landscape worthy of deserting but it calls her chest exodus. her body, so full of blood and bread and water and wine and everything else that makes her a covenant. her body, a body of water, of hydrogen and oxygen and intention and breath and everything else that makes her alive. my mother is alive, past, present, and future tense.