One way of classifying nerve endings is by the way they listen. It is to say: you are an ear to the wall or one to the belly. Another kind of nationhood. There are the ones

that cry me / the ones that cry not-me,

meaning the ones that cry world?

Another is to name them after what they feel: a fall and the cut-throat layers of snow, a love’s name for you and inherited words for a terrible cold, los ojos en la paila. I love you for what you love, not where you began. Pain and fear permeate the in with the out, the else into us.

What kind of nerve endings detect the loss of origins? Tell you to wake to this kind of fever?

Another friend asked: ‘what grief isn’t personal, anyway? It all happens in the same brain.’