The poem is in my hands, and can run stories through her hands.

"<i>
<b>VIOLA</b>
</i>
Cuz she's here -
She came -
She came for <i>me</i> -
And she calls <i>my</i> name -
And I feel her strength coursing thru my Noise like a fire -
And the Mayor staggers back like he's been punched in the face by a row of houses -
"Ah, yes," he grunts, his hand to his head. "Your tower of strength has arrived."
"Todd!" I hear her call again -
And I take it and I use it -
Cuz I can feel her there, riding to the end of the world to find me, to save me if I needed saving -
Which I did -"

Even though I did not understand her entire story, I understood her grief.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. Maybe many of us won't be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.

The pervasive rhythm
of her mother’s heartbeat is a ghostly track
that follows her.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

Todd!” she says again but this time in a way that asks me to look at her and I do and she stops Angharrad at the edge of the square and she’s looking at me, looking right into my eyes–

And I read her–

And I know exactly what she’s thinking–

And my Noise and my heart and my head fill up fit to burst, fill up like I’m gonna explode–

Cuz she’s saying–

She’s saying with her eyes and her face and her whole self–

“I know,” I say back to her, my voice husky. “Me, too.”

And then I turn to the Mayor and I’m filled with her, with her love for me and my love for her–

And it makes me big as an effing mountain–

And I take it and I slam all of it into the Mayor–

A mother's voice is like no other. We recognize every lilt and whisper, every warble or shriek.

Her own daughter
was born, like she had been, in either place
or all places, so she could leave, leap
into the sound she had always heard,
a voice like water, like the gods weaving
against sundown in a scarlet light.

I hear the words, the thoughts, the feeling tones, the personal meaning, even the meaning that is below the conscious intent of the speaker. Sometimes too, in a message which superficially is not very important, I hear a deep human cry that lies buried and unknown far below the surface of the person.
So I have learned to ask myself, can I hear the sounds and sense the shape of this other person's inner world? Can I resonate to what he is saying so deeply that I sense the meanings he is afraid of, yet would like to communicate, as well as those he knows?

She stubs out her cigarette in the brown glass ashtray, then settles herself against him, ear to his chest. She likes to hear his voice this way, as if it begins not in his throat but in his body, like a hum or a growl, or like a voice speaking from deep underground. Like the blood moving through her own heart: a word, a word, a word.

Her voice makes perfume when she speaks,
Her breath is music faint and low.

Feeling like the voice she liked best in all the world was calling her name.

She'd seen them them all before, those faces. She knew them all, knew the sound of their voices, sounds mired in human emotions, sounds clear and pure with thought, and sounds wavering in that chasm between the two. Is this, she wondered, my legacy? And one day I'll be just one more of those faces, frozen in death and wonder.