Echolalia

My mother has moments 
when she remembers things 
that never happened
 and she describes them 
with a specificity that stills
 my heart. She wanted to adopt
 in 1963 but her in-laws wouldn’t let her 
and she knows a lady—sometimes 
it’s a man—whose rabbit wears a silk 
scarf knotted loosely around its neck. 
I wonder if there’s anything true 
in these stories, an artifact, a spark, 
a single detail, and I search for it, 
befuddled. A dead star still 
shines, its light carries across 
the miles and the years, that cold 
expanse between what is lost 
and what we still can see. 
We caught a firefly once, I want to say, 
we caught it between flashes, 
imagining where it might be and reaching 
into the darkness. It shone 
like a filament inside our net, 
a flicker in the stillness before 
flying out with dead sure certainty 
the way every living thing knows 
how to be born.