The most beautiful name.

I asked her to tell me what she was doing on the other side of the curtain, and she hesitated. But when I asked again, she said, “I’m holding it in my hands,” and a minute later, “It’s being sewn shut,” and a few minutes later, “I’m putting it back now.”

And in a little room just a few feet from the table, lighted but so full of bodies I could not see, they worked.

I asked her to tell me more, and she said, “We’re closing now.” And I said “And now?” And she said, “Still closing.”

And from the little room, from a masked face I could not place, amid the din, “She’s breathing, she’s breathing.”

There was no mewling, no pinkness. But there was breath, and that was more than anyone had promised.

Behind the curtain, they closed and they closed. And in the little room, they labored. And on the table, with every stitch, I opened in all the ways I had feared and hoped and needed.