David Kinsey

Sleep On It


It’s that dream again. You know, the one with all the honey and grandfather clocks, and time is ticking in viscous strands. The sky is falling but it’s all papier-mâché, just spit and newspaper, your sweet nothings and I told you so’s. I’m holding your hands and you ask for them back, but I hide them. You think I gift wrapped them and put them in the mail so they can surprise you on your birthday, but it’s nothing but rain, snow, sleet and hail here. You think I swallowed them so I could make a knuckle sandwich joke, and now that you mention that I wish I did. You look down and see that I’m wearing your hands, and you know I did this so you could feel what it was like to be me, but these dreams aren’t about empathy and cheap world play. They’re about you, they’re always about you: you in motion, you descending a stair case, you smashing into me. You can be anybody here in my dreams, anyone I wanted you to be, but you are always you. Your angles. Your vectors. Your wheeze. Your coarse breath against a cup of coffee and a stack of pancakes. We’re at your kitchen table and I’m holding your hands, but this time they’re attached to your arms and I like them better there, that’s where they belong. The food is getting cold and coffee is counting down the minutes, but there will always be more coffee and pancakes. It’s minutes we’re running out of. You know I’m a big dreamer and this one right here is the biggest I’ve had yet, so let’s start boiling water and beating eggs into bisquick. Let’s never wake up.