The woman with the styrofoam cup and no teeth

sits all day at the taxi rank and is a local identity
The driver tells me this in his practised monologue

tells me she lost everything in the war
was forced to grow vegetables for soldiers

slave labour, you know –
How she had nothing

but when the Russians came
she lost everything all over again

How do you lose nothing? 
I think about asking, but he's still

talking about her sitting there
with her no teeth, her free cup of coffee,

and her swearing, so I can't help but float
to my mother, her new teeth

and my grandmother's face
how I recognise it now

in the shape of my mother
except she must have been

there all along, staring
at me from a remove,

like the vacant blue sky
with its constance of stars or that

woman with her everything
and her nothing

all over again.