Where a child was, the small fact of falling

snow that was once rain.

The past watches as the rain collapses

around trains that run off in all directions.

There, your father translates himself to water so he might let rain. Let ruin.

The past he takes with him.

You no longer recognize the night

at the windows, nor the lights of Warsaw obscuring his eyes.

His mother, you find later in her letters. Yellow legal pads like elegies.

He never learned how to write.

You write instead to exist

where time does not.

Instead, windows fall past you. His voice is a place

no one will fall from. A hinge

is a multidirectional listening device. You learn holiness

means it is possible to be everywhere but invisible.

If the past has no end. If everyone you love is alive there.