The moment will be strange. My son has been dead, and I may not know what he has felt. He was torn apart, yes, in his soul, but not destroyed. Was it pleasure, to be made so, spread out and at peace? Did he touch the souls in which he hid and come to know them, to cherish their company? Do I draw him back from paradise, all unwilling, to a cage of bone and meat? Subject him once again to the indignities of thirst, itch and shit, to unrequited love and bodily fear? Was it blissful to be many rather than one? Or has he been in torment all this while, not punished but injured in his soul, as my old nightmares howled? Will I bring back a suffering thing? Then, too, this is resurrection, not rescue. Time has passed and life is different. The land, the friends, the family he knew are changed or gone. He will be born out of time into the world, held at two decades while the rest of us have advanced along the course laid out by the stars, as travellers claim to feel after a long voyage that some part of them yet lingers between one harbour and another. Will he stretch, or snap, at this attenuation? Will those he knew receive him, or fear his return? I will by this act announce myself to the wider world, incontestably a force and a wonder. There will be consequences I can barely imagine. Have I the right?