Static, Remembered

My father’s radio still works, if you are patient, if you turn the dial the way he did, like opening a lock.

Between the stations there is weather. A long grey hiss like rain on a roof in a house you used to live in.

I leave it on at night. I tell myself it’s for the company.

But sometimes, under the static, there is a pause — the shape of a breath being taken in another room —

and then a voice, so low it might be my own blood, saying the names of things in this kitchen: the blue cup, the window, the chair by the door.

Saying them slowly, the way you’d say them to someone learning a language.

Or someone learning the way back.