Disconcerting Dreams of Her

I’m not certain I like it here. The clouds get snagged on the mountains and the rains and rolling thunder are just out of reach, visible but too far to hear or smell or feel. I suppose it wouldn’t make much difference anyway. I mostly sit inside with the shades drawn pretending I’m not here. I had forgotten the roughness of the place where my brother lives. I don’t like to go out alone in this part of town and the neighbors are loud and unstable. But we go out in the evenings to better parts of town when my brother is in the mood for it and the company is worth putting up with the broken shower and the small space. All in all, it isn’t so bad.

But then there are the dreams and the small anxious thing inside me that paces about because I don’t know what to do about them. It is the third dream now, when she has come and said she was coming back. Coming back? What does that mean? I look between the slats of the big window that can see the clouds being torn on the mountain tops. High above the desert, moisture gathers and threatens to fall. An empty threat. My mind turns back to the dreams. What do you mean you’re coming back? You’ve gone west, mother…there is no coming back from that journey.

In the last dream there was a strange resurrection and I think she wants to see my brother. I would work towards that, but he can’t see her because he doesn’t believe so there is no point to it. Then I think that must not be it at all because she has used the guise of others to say the same things—specifically the guise of a person I respect and trust and love— and if this is just about my brother, that doesn’t fit. What are you trying to say? What do you want me to do? Are you trying to say you are leaving the west? Are you trying to say you intend to try again at life? I won’t know you if you come back. I say. You’ll be different.  

Wind picks up and dust swirls… then all is calm and bright. The storm stays on the mountain. My mother stays in the west.

I don’t understand.