They said it was a wonder. That it was worth the wait. And we waited. Body to body outside the coliseum, backs and necks and backs of heads. Heat and b.o. and nothing moving, even breath.

And then: a cry, and then a murmur of disturbance, and the mass of us split, made way, broke open for the body of a woman, transported. The woman wore a bright red dress. She was carried aloft, by men, by the shoulders and ankles, front to the rear, before she disappeared (or had she been draped over somebody’s shoulder? The fact of it dissolves the more I grasp). The color of paste, the woman’s face. Is she dead? I asked my mother. Did she die?

And my mother, as if to reassure me, told me that the woman was old. She said perhaps it was her time.

*

We must have filled the space we’d created for the passage of the body, unmade the narrow aisle. We must have filed in, taken seats in the bleachers. There must have been lions and tigers and fiery rings, elephant tricks, and shimmering women leaping.

*

In the time of no time, my mother is dead, slipped out of her body, in sleep. Was she dreaming of flight? Or of falling? I have grown old. I cannot summon my mother’s voice and yet I can see that woman’s dress, a red flare, wondrous.

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Dawn Raffel is the author of six books, most recently Boundless as the Sky. Her stories have appeared in BOMB, O, The Oprah Magazine, Northwest Review, New World Writing Quarterly, Big Other, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories.