At this hour, each tree becomes the black shape of itself, cut out by some careful hand into a void, a was, a were. With the first thin light of morning they shimmer back into themselves, almost like exhaling.

I exhale, watching them from the back porch steps: oh thank god, they came back.

Anyway this is just a note to you, black shape — my void, my missing, my was, my were. If I’d known it was going to be forever I still probably would have done everything the same but I would have loved you better maybe, needed less. Sufficient unto the day is a tree thereof: I could have been that, a self-sufficient tree, black spruce like an unsteady drunk at the shoreline but standing, still.

‘Suffice it to say’ as your father says, punctuating whole sentences that way so that you know he is gathering his thoughts.

It does not suffice.

You can’t fix what is not broken, when it’s just gone.