LENA 

I knew this cane.

I had touched this cane on a Tuesday morning in February three years ago when the winter had been particularly hard and I had driven to the Carter property at six in the morning because I had needed I could not have told you what I needed, only that I had needed to be near them, near the specific and living things that had been hers, that carried the particular and biological continuity of a plant she had grown and touched and tended with the same hands that had braided my hair and held my face and existed, still, in the specific and cellular fact...