The wish fell from my mother’s phone—the fifth time in so many days—a white hot knife from her brother’s wife, his sullen approval dripping from its edge. She played the message to anyone who’d listen. It was the day before Easter. The hospital, catacomb-quiet. Sun peeled from the windowed walls onto her blinking bed, its blue repose disfigured by tubes. Her fingers drummed the rolling tray—still staged with breakfast she’d begged me to eat, a Styrofoam cup full of melting ice—then splayed across her smooth, pale scalp. Burning, burning, roasting, she chanted, eyelids trussed tight, lashes stitched in two slits. I think I’d rather roast. That sounds like it would be more pleasant. Her feet twitched, socks licked by forked tongues, flickers in eyes now wide as porcelain plates, a smudge of ash at each center. Look at the clouds, I said. A fish. A lamb. The pristine sky, a rotating mobile. Her face turned to mine, pupils like pins. Is that the devil?                           Drip.            Drip.            Drip.                             No, I lied.

There’s no such thing.