I dreamed I was dead but didn’t know it because my husband used petrification to preserve me perfectly. I looked like I was still alive. I couldn’t see or hear or smell or taste or feel, but I thought I could. I experienced the world as if I was still part of it, not realizing my husband was carrying me everywhere: from the bed to the sofa, from the sofa to my desk, from the desk to the car for long drives in the wildlands.

Everything I sensed was a vivid memory, not reality. I’d mined these memories to invoke the aroma the meals my husband cooked, the feeling of his hand holding mine, our dog’s fur tickling my shins, and dawn’s light glinting off vast cliffs and deep canyons while ravens flashed their oiled bodies and I turned to face my husband so I could say “I love you, I love you.”

We went on like this for months or perhaps years. Maybe nearly eternity. I had no concept of time. Every day seemed like past, present, and future all at once until, for whatever reason, I realized my body was a tomb that I was locked inside. I was dead and I knew it, but how could I know anything, even knowing I was dead?

Once I knew I was dead, I could no longer imagine I was alive. The dream of me was on the other side of an inescapable enclosure. Did my husband still carry me around? Did he prop me up next to him so we could watch movies together? Did he take me out to see birds? Where was our dog? Our house? The wildlands? The world?

When would my knowing leave, whatever vestiges of awareness this was? How long would I refuse to vacate this cold black thing where my mind was a fly frantically hitting every ceiling, every wall?