We knelt on the tile floor of the sunroom
with our backs to her. It was summer.
We pressed our faces up close to the grate
of the old metal fan and spoke.
The fan sent everything we said back at us,
and we could feel it blown back
into our mouths. First, just vowels.
Then, words, sentences. Our names,
our parents’ names, our grandmother,
our grandfather, his mother, sitting folded
on the flowered sofa, whom we met just this once.
When my mother told me she had died, I cried
inconsolably. I was five. She was my first death.
Your name had not yet blown back into my mouth.
