Do you still dream?

Dreams about getting the lead in the school play. The vindication of being picked first for a playground game. The nervousness of talking to the pretty girl at school.

All those fears and hopes cast aside when they’re no longer important, when we’re older, far removed from those years.

But they’re still in us somewhere, aren’t they?

Yeah, buddy—they’re still there.

I’ve felt them—an unseen breath blowing dust from the corners of my memory, starting up the old projector behind my eyes now and again.

Maybe you have, too.

And I’ve been wondering: what part of us does that?

What part of us keeps watch, even after we’ve moved on?

I think they might be some other version of us, hiding beneath the bleachers with a can of cheap beer and a nearly empty pack of smokes. Waiting. Watching the school buses pull in at the end of the day, engines ticking as the motors cool down. They watch the assistant coach put away practice equipment. As the shadows stretch longer, they begin skulking around, unseen by the hunched janitors moving through empty halls.

I like to think of them like jokesters—wily miscreants with my forgotten thoughts spilling out of their pockets.

Through the halls they roam, jiggling the handles of locked doors late at night.

They search for windows left open just a crack, just wide enough, pressing against the frame, squeezing through.

Until they’re inside. Inside my dusty photography lab of a brain.

They move in the dark, digging through old filing cabinets and collapsed boxes, until they see it: a glimmer in the dust. At first, only a pinprick of light.

But those characters—the ones in my head—don’t give up easily.

They follow the faint light to the crack in the wall. They know the mortar has shifted just enough to let a finger slip through if they dig. They scratch at the edges as the light grows brighter.

Eventually, they remove the first brick, and on the other side, they see:

My kids have grown. Moved out.

A walk to the mailbox where there are no letters, only leaflets—sales upon sales.

The bricks come away, and one by one, the forgotten dreams spill out of their pockets as they squeeze through the crack.

They see me—TV left on as I doze in my easy chair. My side table cluttered with bottles—the medications that keep my body working, the ones that ease the pain.

Night after night, they find me as I sleep, brushing against my thinning hair. I never wake. In my dreams, I think about people long dead. About moments that might have been.

Most nights, that’s all it is. Just that.

And it feels so real.

I see faces. Trees turning color.

I exit the stage door, elated.

I’ve just gotten the part—the one I always wanted.

More Tiny Worlds —

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Stories in the Tiny Worlds Sketchbook are like a pencil sketch with words; loose, unrefined and not wholly a thing. But I like them and think there’s something here you might like, too.

A few snippets from ye olde archive, warts and all.

Faster (c. 2018)

I downshifted into the corner. The waving—no, vibrating—mirror barely held the image of my assailant.

He was gaining.

With a quick right, then a left, I was again a length, maybe two, ahead.

I leaned in, letting the wind flow over my immaculate machine. We were one, the bike and me. We held fast to the road, even as the frame rolled and flexed beneath me.

The ground almost seemed like light shag carpet as it flew beneath. But I barely had time to glance. In the mirror, I saw him gaining.

Then, he was beside me.

Our elbows were close as he edged up. He smiled at me—that toothless grin.

I leaned. He leaned. I turned wide, and he closed in.

I could see the checkered flag in sight. It would be a neck-and-neck race. A photo finish.

We both leaned down, the sound of our engines loud but I could hear his laughter. Giddy.

And all at once, he turned into me. The cardboard fairing crumpled. He leapt over the side and into my lap.

We both won that race. Maybe me a bit more.

Music to read by: Faster by Rachel Yamagata

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The Dream Is Always The Same (c. 2016)

The dream is always the same.
It finds me, and I can’t escape the vision
any more than the enemy in it.

When I close my eyes, I see

a house draped in late afternoon sun—
  a picket fence,
    an old red farm truck,
      a woman in a cotton dress
        that lies whisper-close to her olive skin.

      Dark hair shades her face from the setting sun.
      I can’t see her details, but our lives are twisted together, rooted.

There’s a garden behind the house
  where two children play among green sprouts.
    They’re long out of diapers but not old enough to understand.

I stand between them—
my loves—
and the road beyond.

I perceive the dust cloud of an approaching vehicle.
It isn’t there, but I can sense the coming intruder.
Too much time has elapsed, and he’s due—

less a person than a force.
Pure evil, I think.
We’ve met before
in some previous life,
some alternate shade of reality
between the dream and the waking world.

He’s unstoppable.
Uncaring.
Unfazed by this world

I rebuild in each dream.
I gather new moments,
create a new life,
smile again,

and watch the sun set knowing—
waiting—for his return,
while impending fear claws at my insides.

Then I see it:
a haze in the distance.
I warn the woman of what’s to come.
I’ve told her my dream—that I must go,
if only to keep her safe.

The enemy,
the devil,
right behind me all along,
will never stop.

She doesn’t believe
until I am gone.

When I wake,
the dread is sweat on my brow,
the fear is in my eyes,
my quick and shallow breathing—

because I know sometime soon,
I’ll dream again.

And the dream is always the same.

Music to read by: Signals by Brian Eno

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“Fuck it!”

—the words tumbled out of his tiny mouth. His toys, his tools, were scattered about the garage. A bin of rags, various bottles of fluid, sockets and wrenches of all types.

With a sideways glance he looked over at his playmate, a tired dog of nearly ten. The boy supposed he could cuss in front of the dog. At least there was no one to tattle. The dirty yellow ball of blubber, laid its head back down on the concrete floor. Nothing to see here.

A cigarette dangled from the corner of his smirk: limply and unlit. He tucked it up behind an ear as he pushed a summer’s worth of uncut hair out of his face up and under a baseball cap.

Tools in hand, he grunted, swearing under his breath, wrenching at the machine. Immovable. Then a last grunt, a final curse, and the bowl his mother lent, filled with fluid.

“Dinnertime” he heard a voice call.

The boy watched as the fluid, all black and smelly, ran out of the machine stuck to the sides of the bowl.

It was magic and always would be.