The passing of faces or the flipping of pages, the same feeling permeates the last spoken words I recall from my dream: they won’t listen. The tension: tightness, shortness of breath, exhaustion from that frustration: “they won’t listen.” I fight the conviction, the accusing voice condemning from shadow, sounding like myself: “I am ineffectual. Impotent.…

Mira cries. She opens her arms and holds them out toward me. I envelop her. Feel her chest heave with the staccato beat of a carpenter’s hammering. Listen to her muffled sobs. All I can do is hold her. Reassure her that she’s not alone as a lifetime’s grief swallows her. damp collargrasshopper songsfade in…