Then she starts talking about repairs, improvements,

all the extra wood and copper piping we have laying around,

all the shelving, she says, shelves! Like, we can make so many shelves, she says,

and her mother comes through, my mother comes through, and hearing any mother is an ear in transcendence, mothers queuing up ancestrally, our mothers' husbands' mothers and their mothers, a throng of mothers' voices speaking from a pressing continuum lowering the skies and the air, the ages, into my ear

before the toast pops up and I'm no longer quite hungry, no

thank you, and I sip my coffee, she sips her tea, and I take a drag

of my cigarette and stand up mum, resisting my loose lips and instead

exhale another small drainage of years and promises and letters and phone calls

like smoke from a great pale of embers, rising,

and bump my head on the overhead

light.

Did you hear me?