My mother was 19 when she married, not 21 when I was torn from her body.  Seventy-two years. Child of water, seeker of oceans and lakes, it was no use; a single breath and my aquatic life was over. Drawn in my age to deserts (a suitable emblem of my sexual life), do I even remember how to swim? My mother would be 93. Seventeen years an orphan, hard to believe that she might well be alive,  By some accounts a Cancer, by some a twin (where is my other?) What is my life then, was her death. Soon there will be no one to remember. As a poet of my acquaintance wrote… “forgetting is what we do.”