Like my perception had suddenly heightened, during the day I would remember the smallest details from these new dreams—like the veins in leaves, or the crinkles around somebody’s eyes, or a baby screaming six stories up. I wet the bed for the first time in ten years one night. I had dreamed of magnolia blossoms descending on a never-ending sepia swamp, something I had only seen in movies or schoolbooks but never in my actual, limited city life. Of course, Ma and Aunt Jewel didn’t complain when I woke up and volunteered to do the laundry. Another night I dreamed of chocolate cake and woke up with sweet on my tongue and crumbs in my bed. Finally, I confided in Jewel about this. Her reaction was outrageous, as usual. She grabbed the salt shaker off the kitchen table and dragged me into my room by one hand; she chanted words I couldn’t make out, flung salt in every corner, cackled, then dragged me right back out. We flew past Ma laughing and wouldn’t tell her why.

I didn’t understand, until I found out how and why my body was changing, that I was sharing even my mind with this strange new someone else. My daydreams were captured by the night. I saw life as if I walked on my knees, my perspective cut down to a child’s eye level, too narrow to be just the baby’s inside but too wide to be only mine. Like the food and water going in my mouth, the blood coiling under my skin, even the rations of my own thoughts were diminished.

One night, in a dream where the only other thing I could remember was a coffin, I saw the wide Black face of the lady called Ma’am come closer and closer and closer … until a bright light circling her head reached out and swallowed me whole.