Dear Maggie, the daughter who left the island and never came back.
Your girl asks for the lullaby your mother used to sing to me. I only know fragments, phrases like "hush now, my darling" and a melody that falters after two lines.
I hum the empty parts and she fills them with her own words, nonsense syllables that sound more right than the real ones ever did.
The pharmacist knows my blood pressure refills by heart. He slides the bottle across the counter and says, "See you next month, Nana."
The hospital parking validation ticket is still crumpled on my dashboard. From when you delivered her. I never threw it away.
Tonight after her bath, she asked for the lullaby again. I sang the two lines I remember, and she finished the song with a story about a seagull who lost its mother.
We become who we are in the dark, in the spaces between what we remember and what we invent. I am the woman humming over a child who isn't mine, becoming a mother all over again.
One day she'll know the full lullaby. She'll sing it to me when I'm the one forgetting.