I can hear her mother
asking questions of her and can only guess

at what her answers are
but hear Debbie mention the Naval Shipyard
and I drift back off deep

into sleep for a moment and can't hear
how she has flown in a tube through the air
like a bullet with her friends
and people that she did not know
how they ate someplace really bad

then I realize it is a work day
our world does go on
even without her here

where her mother stands in the doorway
between the kitchen and the dining room
somewhere in the middle of our lives

to talk to the sound of our daughter
stretched thin to us through wires
changed as it was from a movement of her breath
into electrical impulses
perhaps even light and images

for her mother to hear her voice
for her mother to hold her voice in her hand