He emptied the folder like a mouth, pulled teeth from the drum kit of midnight. I called you, Mom—your voice a shore where deleted things wash back up. Second song: the one that kept my name, the one I sang into a stranger’s phone. I relearned the refrain on the subway, pressed my teeth to melody, stitched it with the thread of a cough, a bruise, a laugh. When I sang it for the first time after loss, it was smaller, truer—an ember that remembers how to keep breathing.