Excerpts in Limbo, Vol. 9

Daniel dreamed that he was standing on a flat pyramid covered with twigs and crumbled pine bark, his bare feet nestled in a patch of strawberries. In the sky there were three suns—one large, burning yellow, and two smaller, pink and soft like newborn twins. The severe light flattened the landscape; colors were faded—green to a bland olive, orange to terracotta. His mother stood facing him dressed in white linen, her hair fell down her back. A braided chain of rose clover spilled out of her hands, wrapped around her wrists and poured down around her feet. She smiled at him, squinting, her face pushed gently toward the sky. When he reached for her, she stepped back off the edge and she drifted through the air, stiff like wood on water. Her body moved further and further away until it was no longer visible, just a dark speck in the enormous sky. Then, from the point on the horizon where she disappeared, there was an explosion of ribbons, dry leaves and crows.