Dreams
Street Signs
These are all the street signs for this area but he keeps moving them around at night so the only people who aren’t lost all the time are the children who never pay attention to signs anyway.
Strange Dream
It was a strange dream, he said, & I don’t remember a thing except it kept my attention the whole time.
Special Occasions
He kept her skin in the closet & brought it out only for holidays so not to get crumbs on it. Do you still love me? she would ask at the end of each day & he would hum her a song as he smoothed away the creases.
Sorrow
This is a box filled with the sorrow of all the people who have been forgotten & some day it will wash the world clean.
Special Container
This is a special container for keeping lies that you tell yourself
& it doesn’t let in any light or air otherwise they start to go bad
& there’s nothing else you can do but throw them out.
Slow Cure
has some sort of disease where you hallucinate & start to not believe in love, but after a year or two, or even sometimes ten or twenty, it cures itself & all that’s left are a few little red spots that twinge & ache whenever you get too near someone else that has the disease & it’s all you can do to stop from reaching out & holding them close
Sin Box
Three stories: Variations on a sin theme 1.) I see stuff like this a lot in my dreams, so I decided it should at least be doing something useful while I figure out what it means. 2.) I’ve tried to keep my sins organized over the years. That way I can correct it quickly if I find I’m missing out on something good. 3.) This box could probably put a curse on someone who believed in that stuff, like a burglar maybe. Personally, I don’t believe in curses, but I don’t think I’d take anything from a box that looked like this either just to be safe.
Simple Pleasures
this is the moon dark as a bird wing & softer, he said
& at that moment I knew only the joy of my child
Sense of Touch
map of all the places you’ll find around here if you put in enough effort & are willing to travel using only your sense of touch
Secret Notes
He wrote secret notes to people he hadn’t met yet. Some of them aren’t even born, he said, but we live in a strange neighborhood & they will need help figuring things out & I won’t always be around to explain it to them.
Secret Potion
this is a secret potion that makes you see the world differently & she’s found it safest to use only on the weekends
Self-Conscious
He is self-conscious because everyone knows he has wings but they’ve never seen him fly. Now & then there will be a feather in odd places or maybe a footprint to show he was there. All in all, he thinks it’s nobody else’s business what he does with his free time.
Seconds
This is a bag full of eyes that stopped seeing the amazing stuff a long time ago, so he’s hoping to unload them cheap.
Secret Names
After he was quiet a long time, words began to come to him in dreams & told him their secret names & this was the way he learned the true nature of the world.
Scraps of Magic
These are little scraps of magic & when you paste them together you get a memory of something fine & strong, she said. Sometimes it takes till you’re 40 to see it though.
Saving Up
saving up a bag full of peak moments she’s going to have someday if she can ever get away from all the same old stuff that’s holding her back & you can pretty well guess how it’s going
Running Behind
When I met the Grandfather of Time, he said it was no use struggling. Even after all these years he still had too much to do.
Road Trip
A box full of fantasies you have to be away from town to use
Riding the Pony
When I was younger, my favorite thing was riding the pony outside the Safeway. My dad always said I should save my money for something better, but I could ride for miles all over the West & always end up back at the Safeway & all it cost was a quarter & I still can’t think of anything better than that.
Remembering
You have to remember to make it all over again every day, the angel said to me. Otherwise it goes all to hell.