In my dream people stampede through the aisles of the department store, shoving past glass partitions and racks of clothes. Cornered, my only choice is to throw the dog I’ve been riding into the jaws of the oncoming lion in hopes that it will distract him.

In my dream I create two things: a concrete building of stacked two-person conference rooms with tables and rugs, and a salad with peaches slices into strips and latticed together. People are inspecting both of them on the campus’s beach.

In my dream I struggle out of bed and walk into the warehouse. The play is happening and walls are painted a mottled gray, covered in splotched fabric, winding and endless. I am backstage and lost, I find someone who might be a stage manager and ask to be brought to the “front of house”. She leads me through more set, more rehearsal, more debris. There is glass on the floor. She grins and disappears.

In my dream it’s orderly until I get past the first archway.

In my dream the frame slips, the images repeat and I get up while a song I’ve forgotten plays in my head.

In my dream I’m back in the apartment I’ve always coveted and the walls have been resurfaced. I search for an additional room that I might make into a studio. Like usual, rooms fork in all directions and the layout is bewildering.

In my dream I’m looking at a rack of papers. I hold a handle. We have been building for days. 

In my dream we move along the stage. It’s about to happen.

In my dream the scene can be viewed through the gridded tail of a blaze orange monkey.

In my dream the stationary I flip through is soft and beige. I am already late for the class I am the guest speaker at and there are too many elevators behind the marble reception areas.

In my dream there are boxes and laughs.

In my dream the technician presses the defibrillator paddles into my father’s chest. Seconds after I hear the word “clear” I am pacing the length of the darkened room. The excess current has knocked me out for hours and now The Cramps are setting up to play a show in the tattered stage  that fills the back wall.

In my dream I pack my few things so that I can move out of the apartment I’ve been staying in. It’s because two of my exes are in love and are moving in together. They’ve cleaned the place well.

In my dream it is dark and rolling. The argument continues.

In my dream the scavenger hunt ends where a treet top brushes against the balustrade of a stone bridge: I reach into the branches and pull out  a couple of gifts, including a scroll that lets me speak to Vincent Price’s granddaughter,who gives me that caftan that her grandfather wore when he would take mushrooms in the Seventies.

In my dream the five of us lay face down in the snow, trying to look dead and listening for the sounds of the other survivors’ horses, so that we can ambush them when they come to investigate us. They are better equipped, so this is going to be hard.

In my dream the fight and the teasing goes on until I bite his finger off. Then I am smirking and hugging with another femme in a room draped in silver pin lights.

In my dream the air is not as gentle as I want it. I look at my hands.