Starr Goode BODIES IN TIME How often as a little girl I must have held my mother’s hand just so or else have longed for it, if, after a night fear, my body woke up in the dark alone. On lucky nights, she would accept me kindly into her bed. I could fit perfectly into the crescent of her body lying on its side, ease right into her warm shape, the consoling curves of my maker’s body. Today, my mother asks me to please button her blouse for her, her body in a stage of new decrepitude. Her spine now bows, the dowager’s hump. To be her companion, I sit hour after hour with her. I wait for her to tell her story, but she cannot.