“I still have nightmares about my mother,” I told my friend Zack on a frigid October night in downtown Mystic. “She’s running through the Darién jungle from a man dressed head to toe in camouflage. His face is shadowy and deformed. I can’t see my mother’s face, but I can hear her scream.” Zack’s face was as pale as mine, flushed with goosebumps. “I…don’t know what to say.” I kept the rest of the dream to myself because it was too terrifying to put into words. I never met my mother or even saw a picture of her. In my dreams, however, I saw her braided hair, mestizo skin, and unblinking brown eyes so vividly that I felt like I…

“I still have nightmares about my mother,” I told my friend Zack on a frigid October night in downtown Mystic. “She’s running through the Darién jungle from a man dressed head to toe in camouflage. His face is shadowy and deformed. I can’t see my mother’s face, but I can hear her scream.” Zack’s face was as pale as mine, flushed with goosebumps. “I…don’t know what to say.” I kept the rest of the dream to myself because it was too terrifying to put into words. I never met my mother or even saw a picture of her. In my dreams, however, I saw her braided hair, mestizo skin, and unblinking brown eyes so vividly that I felt like I…

“I still have nightmares about my mother,” I told my friend Zack on a frigid October night in downtown Mystic. “She’s running through the Darién jungle from a man dressed head to toe in camouflage. His face is shadowy and deformed. I can’t see my mother’s face, but I can hear her scream.” Zack’s face was as pale as mine, flushed with goosebumps. “I…don’t know what to say.” I kept the rest of the dream to myself because it was too terrifying to put into words. I never met my mother or even saw a picture of her. In my dreams, however, I saw her braided hair, mestizo skin, and unblinking brown eyes so vividly that I felt like I…