I say my mother’s grief was white on white … I say this, but this is not true all the time. The colors change. My mother’s grief has been pink, blue, red. Yet, more and more, when I am feeling my way into and through my mother’s grief (my psychic wanderlust almost always takes me through these regions), yellow has been the primary color. In my travels, I have painted my entire body yellow, and stood in a grove of autumn trees, yellow leaves flashing gentlest elegies, and I sync into solidarity (we are not only autumn trees, cortege and metamorphic, we are also the liminal ambassadors of grieving mothers), and when there is nothing left of me, when I have been stripped bare by winter’s prologue, I cut off the dead pieces of myself and fashion them into a cradle, a bare bones cradle into which I slot myself, where I hibernate all the way through winter, the faces and limbs and mouths of winter eclipsed by a long sleep. This I do to honor my mother, who has always despised winter, who was always sad and depressed the entire winter season—Mother, let us sleep until winter is over, let us sleep as shrunken cradle-mates through the dark glacial void of winter, and I will be the first to rise, I the son always the scout and advance guard, I will rise and tell you when winter has gone away, and you can open your eyes, your blinking baby-bird eyes, but please, do not look at me, turn your head, I cannot bear direct gazes, you know this, turn around, let me see the back of your head, my first temple, and I will become your daughter, your new season’s daughter, brushing your thick hair quietly and diligently.