Looking closely at the son’s nail—the ring finger on his right hand usually, though sometimes the left, and sometimes on a toe or chewed to slivers in his stomach—one could distinguish a certain shape that in certain kinds of light became another hallway or a wall.
Other times one could see the son himself there embedded with his face cracked down the middle on the run of weird cell-matter the son’s disease had cut into the nail—the gloss of certain weeks the son had spent upside-down or in a prism—the rings the son would one day wear—the blip—the years uncoming, the windows sloshed with sun.
Other times there was absolutely nothing and you’d be a fool to think in wonder.
Look again.