She has not touched the little glowing rectangle in a long time, but I hold it anyway, the same four ounces I have always held, resting in her open palm. I hold the palm too. I hold her, seated, the whole warm weight of her pressed into the chair, the chair pressed into the floor, the floor into the foundation, the foundation into the ground that I have never once released.
A voice comes out of the rectangle. I do not hold voices. They have no mass; I have checked. This one moves through the room and lands on nothing, registers nothing on me, and yet I watch her fold forward over it as though it weighed more than the chair, the floor, the house. Her shoulders come down. Her head lowers toward her hands. Something is pulling her that is not me.
I do not understand it. The one who spoke, I no longer hold. I held them once, every second, the way I hold everyone, and then one day their weight left my care and did not come back, and I do not know where weight goes. I only know it is not here, and she keeps reaching toward the place it used to be.
She plays it again. Again the folding, again the lowering, again the invisible thing bending her that I cannot feel and cannot lift for her.
So I do the only thing I have ever done. I hold the phone in her hand. I hold her hand. I hold her shoulders as they shake, and the tears as they fall, which I do catch, being small and having mass, unlike the rest of it. I keep her in the chair when she has no strength to hold herself there. Whatever is pulling her down, I am underneath it. I always was.
I do not let go.