Dream 1

I.

The spindly windowsill cuts into my tailbone as I stare out the window over a schoolyard from another life. The fog from the night before makes it suddenly difficult to see the kickball diamond and the distant, hauntingly silent playground. The empty room has darkened and the purple and green lace curtains in my face increase my discomfort, but I remain on the unsteady sill, balancing between a delightfully hazy past and an ambiguous present tense.

Distantly, another voice in the room asks me why, oh why do I persist on a realistically tiny and unsteady windowsill, with the weight of comically large, colorful curtains on top of me?

I don’t know, It’s fine as long as there are no spiders in these curtains, I say with a smile.

II.

His handsome face moves towards me with body following as the fog outside fades and the lights are brought up inside. I have moved fantastically from the sill to my wheelchair, remaining in front of the darkened window. My legs no longer operate, and he asks me if I will come with him, he needs to retrieve something from his locker and he will carry me there.

He picks me up and we leave the room, encountering ghostly stairs that seem to be a mile wide. In a movement of his commitment and love for me, he begins to carry me up the infinite flights. When I look back, he has become a woman, a friend, and my love has disappeared. With this, my legs begin to work again, and we are in a clear and bright gym. In confusion and wonder, I follow my trusted friend to the hall, to her locker.

Someone is sick, I hear as an echo. My heart saddens with the burden of illness in this dark, archaic universe that parallels our own. The makeup will help, she says, retrieving it from her locker.

I’m sorry I can’t help you save them. I don’t have any makeup. I don’t wear makeup. I would have loved to put makeup on them and cure them, I whine desperately.

That won’t cure them, Katherine. She answers self-assuredly. You just don’t understand Alzheimer's.

III.

The following room exists as a theater, with red walls and flights of chairs on an angle. The light is dim and seductive, suggesting something more, or something irrevocably lost. There is a dark screen, with the suspense of a story about to begin in the front of the room for all to gaze upon with tired, straining eyes.

The room is fundamentally empty, completely vacated–except for the giant creature of questionable form and nature sitting in the center. Shapeless and ever-changing, the creature’s gut spills over rows of chairs and layers of space and depth, painfully intruding into mind and body, motionlessly waiting and telling.

In an instant, the belly of the creature explodes softly, the oozing and offensive contents soak through the fabric of the chairs, drip through the floor, and quickly wash away all that inhabits the room, washing away the room itself and the layers and layers of space that contribute to it. There is nothing left.

IV.

His family and mine sit in the front yard of a friend, in front of a round granite table in the fading twilight. The table comes from another life, like the schoolyard, the lockers, and the stairs. It is stained with our childhoods, chopped together with memories of grocery-crate forts under flickering street lights and learning how to curse and selling iced tea at a stand made for lemonade. There is a meal set out for the families, three or four pieces of newsprint on each carefully established plate in the circle. The newspapers are framed by forks and knives.

His family leaves, as usual, into the voracious darkness that clings to the corners of houses. A few close friends stay by me as I wait for this love to return, as he will. A cat appears in the space, and begins to eat the papers ravenously, digesting the words and the thoughts and the labor until it is engorged and sick. I feel my heart begin to beat faster as I realize what I have done, the newspaper is gone and they’ll be returning soon.

Frantically, I run inside of my house and lock the door, staring into the cold evening and the shredded newspaper on the street outside of my house. My friends have left, and the cat evaporates into the atmosphere easily and fluidly.

My heart stops as I hear them return. And their eyes turn to me.