Last night in my dream my mother had become small, the size of a large baby.  Her limbs were curled in and her body hunched so it resembled a beetle.  She was being kept in a little shack on a stone pier.  My sister and I took turns holding her, comforting her. The young women taking care of her and the inventory in the shack tried to get me to initial things in metallic markers:  a crate of antique toys in gold, a bag of yarn in copper.  I refused.

My sister looked at me and said "I don't want to be here."  I said the same to her.  Then our car, parked on the stone pier, decided it didn't want to be there either, and it rolled into the water.

I spent the rest of my dream battling with water, trying to release a cardboard box of snakes and small mammals which had been buried on a crowded beach.

I woke up exhausted.

 This morning walking to get the car there is grey everywhere: the streets, the sky, everywhere.   A woman walked toward me.  As she got closer I could see my name tattooed across her chest. 

I know my mother is alive because this morning the nurse called my house accidentally but once or twice a week I dream she has died and I wake with some phantom pain.