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26 Talking with the Dead To consider the shape your breath takes in the sudden chill of my imaginings: you, alive again, shouting down the pitch and yaw of the city’s stubborn snowplows— a sound so real I could touch it before it dissolved into intimations of mist; to admit when I see your face in strangers lit by the half-light of the late train, I want to ask where you are headed, if your silence should tell me you are listening to what I’ve left unsaid; to say in those last weeks of long illness I watched your every sentence soften like a worn sheet are you listening, are you . . . to talk to you again; to tell you I am; to fill the room’s starched emptiness with a voice that answers to no one. ...

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