come here

Wake up, I whisper to my mother. Wake up. I want to wake her so slowly, she will think it happened naturally. I blow on her face, and when my mother's eyelashes flutter, I run and hide behind the half-opened door. Then I wait, edge closer and closer to the bed. When I am very close, my mother's eyes fly open. What are you doing in here? She shuts her eyes again.

My mother falls asleep as easily as she breathes. She falls asleep mid-sentence, or even mid-bite. My father says my mother is a hummingbird. Hummingbirds, I read, often die in their sleep. One day, exhausted, they drop from the sky into a sleep from which they never wake.