I should have turned on the porch light, but the bulb is dead, I said, I had to leave her alone in the bathroom so I could stand outside and watch for the ambulance because the porch light is out, I wasn’t certain the EMTs would find the house, but she’s in the bathroom, on the toilet and can’t stand, while I was teaching a class tonight, she phoned the evening coordinator who stood at the classroom door and softly told me she needed me, but I don’t understand why a firetruck is at the house because she just needs an ambulance, she broke her hip a few weeks ago and two months ago she had a quad bypass, so she can’t walk but made it to the bathroom tonight, I’m looking into a black, late November sky, watching three EMTs carry my mother, covered with a white sheet from feet to neck, looking so insignificant that the cotton cloth retains the flat shape of the stretcher, not the outline of a body, down a flight of wooden stairs to the foyer where a fourth EMT tries to chat me up and out of politeness, I respond appropriately as the gurney floats by me, out the front door, into the cold, starless night, where now I stand, where we face one another, her small, grey, disembodied face illuminated above the linen that glows like a dense swarm of fireflies, and she says, make sure to feed the cats.

Caroline Malone is a writer who lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, East Tenn. Her fiction has appeared in Still and The Blue Mountain Review. Her poetry has appeared in Boulevard and The Dos Passos Review.