The Science of Longing

I’m no believer, no scientist. I am a daughter
sitting opposite my dead mother
at the breakfast table, the distance between us
as large as the gravitational pull
between binary stars. It’s possible infinite
dimensions exist, not just the three, and once
I knew Jesus, the Truth who rose from the dead.

Now, all I know is the dumb muffle
of TV, the doorbell’s silence, this breakfast
table, no breakfast. There is much I’d like science
to answer. Is it all or nothing: alive or dead? Why
am I ashamed to hope? Will I ever break my orbit
around her constant death? Dear science,
is my longing yet large enough? Perhaps

my mother sits at the table in a dimension
only a dog can hear. She asks where she is, or
where am I, or where her life has gone. Why
I’m so old, why she so young, why death made us
into sisters, estranged for light years,
who have forgotten how to talk to one another.