I am swimming in water so blue that even when you’re dreaming you think nothing this pure exists in real life, a blue so translucent you can almost breathe it. I hunt black-and-white fish as they dart through red coral reef, when suddenly I am wrenched from behind. I try to kick away but cannot move my feet. Something pulls me under. I begin to feel dizzy with the effort of not breathing, and when I know I will drown, I wake up, gasping for air. I found my mother after she had been dead a night and a day and another night. I usually stopped by to check on her before and after work and during the day on the weekends, to see if she was lucid, eating, sleeping, combing her hair. Since moving into my own apartment last year, I missed only one day, and on that one day she chose to die. I think she did it on purpose, to punish me. Or, maybe, to release me. I brought doughnuts that morning, my usual peace offering of maple bars, planning on having breakfast with her on the lanai. The lanai was the main reason my mother bought the house when we first saw it, almost two decades ago.
