Dreaming

I wake up in Kansas City. It’s 2:18. I feel like I’ve just risen from a coma but my eyes are still closed and I can hear the ambulance pass through, it sounds like an organ grinders melody. I dream that people I have known in my life are visiting me, asking me why I am here, and I answer them the same way I answer the zombies in real life, “I don’t know. I thought I was in love.” They laugh at me the same way they would if it was real life and give me that here’s looking at you kid smile. Except, in my dream I’m in my backyard on Washington Place. I’m talking to Scott Ahlsmith and I ask him for a lighter and he gives it to me with a shamed face. I thank him and he tries to sell my mother carpet. She tells him she likes the kind she had in 1985 that use to leave footprints in her room when the kids would come say good night. She liked the footprints. She doesn’t get that he has a good deal and he smiles at her with sadness, she’ll never get it. He liked that kind of carpet too, he tells her. I ask him when he started smoking again. He said, “I’m quitting today, you know I had that problem with my lung, in fact, I think I have to take myself to the hospital.” I tell him I’ll take him. That’s me, always helpful. He says, no, he’ll be okay, he has a punctured lung and shouldn’t be smoking. I hear that ambulance turning the corner and realize I’m not in a good neighborhood. I should lock my door. I wake up again in Kansas City, in a good neighborhood half way to my door I realize, it’s locked and I go back to bed. 2:23 AM.