The Shirt

I had a dream about you last night.

We were in your car; it was much like the time you picked me up from the airport: I remember your big smile like a happy puppy when I came down the escalator and instead of running up and kissing you and laughing and being in love, like I dreamed about doing later, I just walked up to you and we walked to the luggage. The carpet was a brown mix, like your brown pants, like my brown suitcase that had ended up on another flight. You were driving home, my new home, down unfamiliar streets thousands of miles away from my old streets, and talking about what I said when we first kissed. I didn’t remember and you got quiet. A little bit later, I kissed your ear and told you I loved you and you squeezed my shoulders so tight it hurt.

So it was like that. That part was real. This part is the dream: we were in your car driving through swirls. You looked different, more saturated, and you were smiling. I reached over and hugged you while your hands were on the steering wheel and I said: “I’m so glad you are here! I missed you so much!” Later in that dream your sisters baby cut himself and was bleeding black blood and everyone was screaming and running because it was the Black Death, and you were a man with a young blonde girl on a horse riding away down a dirt path lined with tall reeds into the sunset.