I am a small ugly woman whom God, for reasons known only to him, decided to persecute with holiness. I have attempted to lose myself all my life, but he who never forgets held mirrors up everywhere I turned. Now I’ve died and they have found the “darkness” I knew since Calcutta, the absence that sat like an ugly child on my chest. I became their narrow fingers reaching out from filth, their stench no water could rinse away, their deaths held too tightly for too long. I became their blank eyes and finally saw everything. Yet I knelt beside them dry-eyed and tireless. I prayed when I had nothing left but words. I brought back rags in cardboard boxes that would not burn. I became an old woman, tired beyond sleeping. The dead had become my arms, my breasts, my dry tears. I was alone. I wished for certainty more than life. I had neither. Only old hopes from old stories. When I tried to pray, ashes flew around my face. The sign of the cross blessed my shallow breathing. Then the old priest blessed me instead. I was too stubborn to run into the light. I will outwit my lover a little longer, I said to the thin air inside my mind. I thought I heard another one outside the door, raised my arms toward him, and was gone.