Poof

Breath.  I suppose there was a gathering, a party of sorts.  When I was one, my identity was my mother.  When she laughed so did I, and when she cried…  I enjoyed the spoonfuls of mush she fed me, the tiny jars of turkey or chicken sausages.  When I was older, maybe I was five or six, I disappeared for a moment.  I was sitting on the floor of the kitchen and then suddenly…  “Mother,” I said, “for a minute, I wasn’t here.”  “What do you mean?” she asked.  “All there was was the tree and the sunlight and the house, but I was gone.  I wasn’t here.”  “That can’t be,” she said.  [But it was so.  For one minute, I didn’t exist.]