I begin the year in love and offer morning glory to the lake. My mother is lying in a brown coffin. Her burial site keeps getting flowers, not from my hands. Even love breaks us, and my father’s mind is buried in the rubble of rocks that binds him to my mother, and forgets his bag on the table and leaves Àgọ́-Àrẹ. Even love opens the windows, and what I get are my mother’s ashes hidden in the wardrobe. Her ashes become seeds, and grow into a forest of cashew trees, and she is plucking the cashews from its trees, saying: come join me, child. I begin the year in love and imagine I can attend her funeral, not watching across the Atlantic, and can cover her eyes with the sea sand in my hands, not standing by the seaside at Panama City Beach, wanting the sea to carry me back to her lap, and her voice is itched in my ears like the handwriting of God on my palms, but my absence is my final offering.