Sometimes I leave conversations, say
my mother is calling—although I have no mother—
muscle memory of a lie that I have

never quite been able to leave behind. It’s
the tap of a doctor’s hammer on my knee. Excuse me
one moment, my mother’s calling. The phone not

even ringing, just held limp in my hand.
The way her hand stopped being
an anchor and started being a statue. The way

a word, once spoken, can disappear if not
acknowledged. The chronic emptiness that comes from
a heart, left too long in the open.