What happens when a young man, begging God to spare his mother, ends up bargaining away his sister's life? It begins with a phone call. There's been a terrible accident. There may be no survivors. Then there's a night flight to Texas, two men in a rental car racing to a country hospital, and on-lookers whispering "El Papa" as the older man walks to the ICU. The two are father and son, come to learn the fate of their family. The mother and elder daughter survived, the younger, Deborah, didn't. Talitha Cumi: 26 Poems on a Common Theme follows the blood trail of Grief's savage attendance upon the survivors. The mother is asked about a dress and shoes for her daughter's corpse, has nightmares, visits the grave decades later, an old woman. The father endures what Death has disposed, and the elder sister celebrates her lot. The agonized brother, having learned that a pact with God may be worse than with Satan, groans under his life-long burden. In the end, his own death frees both him and Deborah who had been trapped in his memory's loving grasp.