although there were no children playing, nor doves, nor rooftops shaded blue, I felt that the town was alive. And that if all I heard was silence, it was because I hadn’t yet grown accustomed to the silence. Maybe because my head was still full of sounds and voices. Yes, filled with voices. And here, with the air so thin, they were easier to hear. They settled inside you, heavy. I remembered what my mother had told me: “You’ll hear me better there. I’ll be closer to you. You’ll find the voice of my memories closer to you there than that of my death,
