Everything I know about mourning, I learned from my father. A professional mourner like his father before him, he knew thirty-three different ways of appearing desolate. Most people only know four. We lived above the mortuary. The corpses never bothered me, they were easy to get along with and didn’t mind the dark. We went to funerals every day, my father was the best mourner. One of the great benefits of our work—we never had to worry about food. It was always catered, there was usually baked brie, pâté on toast points, two different kinds of champagne. My father said his favorite part of a funeral was the women. They always smiled at him as they walked by in their black silk dresses, made him think of sailboats on a summer night gliding on the water.

Horses in the field and whippoorwill sing. The dwarves go on as before, each day spent chipping away with pickaxes. They don’t know what to do with the empty place at the table, the pile of half-knitted sweaters. Every evening, they gather near the glass coffin in the clearing, all they’re left with now are the details. The rise and fall of her chest, the sharp protuberance of hipbones, knees, blue and yellow flowers on her dress. Oak trees mottled with lichen, creaking in the wind. The tips of their cigarettes glow brighter than the fireflies at dusk.

My mother told me I was carved from the trunk of a sycamore tree. I remember her blade whittling my knees, the planes of my neck and torso. She shaped my lungs, I let out a breath; the first spears of hunger flickered in my wooden belly.