three hours younger than me in California.

I tell her about the city, the spectacular

architecture that slits waves of light

as it sprawls into the sky, leaving out

how all the concrete sometimes gets heavy

on my frame. My worry for the trees,

if they’re cold in their nakedness,

paranoia for their lack of green,

is also not worth signaling into existence.

But did she just hear the live jazz leaking out

of the basement bar I passed pacing

Midtown East? Thirty years ago

when she came to America she dreamed

about this city but now nothing

makes her happier than tending her garden,

the space and the succulents and the silence.

Now I’ve run out of words except I love you,

good night, but she isn’t good with phones,

forgets to hang up. I hear the glass screen clink

against the kitchen counter and the kettle

rumbling its song. She mutters

something in Mandarin to my father, hunched

over the creaking dinner table.

Their hometown’s dialect always sounds

like a muddied argument, and the language blurs

even further through my speaker’s audio filter.

I picture the cut-off frequencies diffusing

through the house like bags of chamomile tea.

I wonder if she still struggles with her sleep.

Because he pays attention to everything,

my dog barks at a leaf falling off of a tree

on the other side of the street. She drifts off

to silence him, her slippers shuffling

in static twenty-seven-hundred miles away.