instead of going to her office to discuss what she thought of me, i slept in.
i can do it next tuesday, if i wanted to.
i delayed my alarm soundings one by one, jolted awake each time, annoyed by myself:
how little i knew of myself. or, maybe, how much i rebelled against my knowledge of myself every day, refusing to accept the ways in which i work, setting up earlier alarms than i would ever follow.
in the two hours of my thursday afternoon nap, i dreamed. and of all the scenarios i dreamed, i can only remember the last few seconds of it now.
saying goodbye to a friend, we were going home. we were in new york. i thought you were leaving for philadelphia to return for the semester (this dream backtracked two weeks from reality time), with me, but you weren't. you wanted to stay in new york, to extern a bit longer than the usual week. (even though, thinking about it now, the time frames don't make sense). you externed at a famous law firm. i didn't. i felt defeated, both at my diluted career aspiration, and at the thought of losing my travel companion.
and what was more, i think we were in a relationship in my dream. and the feeling i felt when you chose your job over me...
so i bought my ticket to stay in new york. there was no reason to go back to philadelphia so early, anyway. when i last went back to school earlier than was necessary, i felt lonely, depressed, worthless. (again, though, that early return "last" time took place two weeks ago in reality time. so maybe i traveled forth in time in dream). i bought my ticket to go home to my parents, which meant really no ticket at all, because my parents live in new york and we were still in new york, and i had my metrocard--and that was all i needed.
i walked with you away from the ticket booth and towards the spiral stairs that would lead us down to the station platforms, and as we were stepping down, i played my fingers against yours. because our hands weren't holding each other. because i wanted to be closer. because i wanted you to recognize my presence. acknowledge me. play with me.
love with me.
i wanted to confirm that you were not annoyed by me. because i am always afraid that you are annoyed by me.
your fingers gave me a response--weak, soft, their attention restrained, barely there. but it was a response nonetheless. i guess i was contented.
then, as we reached the bottom of the stairs, the end of the spiral led us to your sudden agitation at something on the floor. another person to my left gasped and was trying to say something...and so were you...and i can't remember now, but maybe you tried to pull me to the side, or pull me down, towards where you were. meanwhile, your fingers and face told me in striking movements that something was horribly wrong, that i musn't step in it, and what was it? what was it? a man...a man who was decapitated by someone with an ax, whose loose head i couldn't see--though maybe i wasn't trying very hard to see it--or perhaps i was trying very hard to avoid it--. i saw only a vague, dark spot on the floor, interrupted by what seemed to resemble the remains of roadkill guts that can't be removed from the ground even after the carcass has been hauled off--the parts of the body's insides that no one bothers to clean up off of the ground because it's just too nasty to touch, just too gross to look at and think about. no one wants to be reminded of a body in its expired, grotesque forms.
and you were telling me that you had to go, go, go throw up somewhere, so you ran away from me and towards the end of the station. so i took my leap and followed you, disorientated by your instability, fearful of what else would go wrong...
and you threw up, in my peripheral vision, a mass of white that sent the stench of vomit wafting through and through the air. i tried to go back up the stairs that we came down, in a panic now, and you told me not to, throwing at me an abbreviated phrase that meant danger, contagion, mortality (i guessed, and i guessed right). so i walked towards a woman whom i saw a little ways away on the platform, since you were devoted mostly to vomiting.
i woke up, sometime there, with my left arm bent in a funny angle, numb and falling asleep.
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