Smaller than hours and waves, I liein their shade. Daubed with their paste. A formof peace in the island green of mourning.When I graduate, my mother used to say,one of our little jokes. To graduate, a step bystep affair. The silence is like a bronzeage bell tolling. Announcing her death, whichI know of already, or declaring a newphase. In order for the community to gather.In the Egyptian Book of the Dead,Osiris waits in the dark to burst forth, hitting airas a swallow, a falcon, a craftsman, a snake,a lotus, but never a tree. My mother complainedthat I dress like a widow, my hair like barkor ash and that I intentionally neglect to brush it.It is instead the shyness of those most favoredthat makes me hide, like pigment blendedwith water and spread across the surface of a skymade to wrinkle and absorb it. Wake me,let me walk again, the dead plead in the Egyptianhymns. As my mother did when she was alive.Lift your eyes. Can you find the one branchwavering in the Forest of No Wind?Strong emotion must leave its trace, the writers say.The painters know, within the trunks of cedar,there are many carved wooden rooms,sunlight pouring forth from doors they left ajar.