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34 Underwood I watched in incomprehension as her fingers flew above the keyboard, not like birds but faster and more precisely—butterflies in the nerves of which are all they ever need to escape from predators. My mother’s fingers knew, too, where the letters were for the words she’d taken down from my father, speech that ascended into a sky I still see glimpses of on good days, when a couple of cabbage whites in the garden over an unimpressive privet perform an impossible dance that tires my eyes to look at or my mind to follow, but these do not tousle my hair or touch my cheek. But then, as I’ve come to realize, they don’t have to. ...

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