christine

I had a dream you stepped out of your body like a suit and were a tall red head with freckles.

I had a dream you drove through a nameless dark city so heavy with pounding rain that the windshield was white, and we were late somewhere and I was grateful.

I had a dream we walked through a museum and you were carrying an otter or a package like child, walking through the slender corridors that were bursting with tropical plants, and you announced that it was your birthday, and I hugged you as we stepped on the escalator.

I had a dream I was tiptoeing through some silent suburban neighborhood in the early morning and I found my favorite mug in a tree, melted by a small yellow candle that had burned in its center. It was wet with dew, and I felt a curious sensation of happiness that it had been found and sadness that it was ruined.

I had a dream you met my brother and father at the bottom of a slopping incline of a white building dully lit by skylights showing the rain, the railed strip raised for wheelchairs or in lieu of escalators like those zigzagging up through the middle of Scandanavian grocery stores of many levels, to push or pull the carts laden with brightly colored packages or fruit, and you were quiet, holding your arms like a child by a leafy potted plant and my father wore a leather jacket and seemed to be in a terrific hurry.

I remember in my dream an overwhelming desire to buy chocolates, but the woman at the booth was thin and spindly and her eyes flickered black and forth like maggots, glaring under her fine, thin Swedish eyebrows like a witch or my highschool guidance counselor, orange hair pulled back in a loose bun, squinting in the sun, a long tattoo racing down her narrow shoulders.

I had a dream that I was lost in a building that spanned the entire city, overhung like a highway, but when I found myself on the top floor it was flat and smooth and I could see all the way across the pink speckled carpet, and you were leaning against a metal railing in front of tropical flowers that loomed in the glass behind you, and I thought to myself maybe I could have found my way back home in the morning, if it hadn’t been dark and raining so hard.

When I woke up you had sent me a picture, in the dark of an anonymous room across the continent making a face, you had no freckles and your skin had deepened with sun.