Go, they said. We'll help take care of the children. That first winter, I buy padlocks, a flashlight, a disposable camera at the drugstore so I can take snapshots of the snow on the way to campus. Don't go out with damp hair, I'm told; or they'll snap like brittle icicles in cold air. Before I find an apartment shared with other grad students, I make my first calls from public phones in lobbies. I clutch a paper bag of coins in one hand and listen for the warning tone. The day of departure loops in my mind: my mother and two older daughters rising before dawn to board a cab for the airport; we all decide it will be a mercy to leave the youngest, still asleep, with our katulong. What words did we say exactly and what sort of embrace :: before the doors sealed themselves in place between us. Year after year and it is a decade :: then two :: then three. You make a litany of what I've missed for which there never will be a good enough answer. I can tell you about the blur of nights but not about the sounds of longing I'm told escape my lips in sleep. I could tell you that my life, narrowing more toward that cold museum bend, will never amass adequate redress :: this body and its relics incapable of righting all the scales.