for movement through something thicker than air. On land I stumbled.

At five I began wearing beeswax earplugs; these translucent orbs of malleable wax would conform to whatever they were pushed into. Despite the precautions, I gradually lost hearing from fluid buildup behind my eardrums. I spent some time nearly deaf, though only temporarily. An operation at six alleviated my hearing problem. When the doctor placed the anesthesia mask over my face and I began counting backwards, eyes closed, I could see each number I recited behind my eyelids, colorful and warped and morphing into the next digit.



Dreams.

I woke up with a crooked twisted back and a dry mouth. I woke up and wanted to wake up at any other time, less twisted up. Last night's dream was about Scarlette and Jimmy; they were in a low-rent apartment and Jimmy made her leave, and then his bed was air and it popped, and then Katy and I crawled out of our floor palettes towards the closet while the air was hissing, and then closet doors closed and opened, very cold and industrial, but we did not care and just crossed through via elevator to play the Kachina games with all lights neon, tiny adorable figurines to win (they were made from strips of bark), and only a few small incandescent coins at risk. The elevator was horrifying: I froze and felt it would fail while the LED display above the entry doors marked the floors traveled vertically. It was even worse that I hit the wrong floor, several hundred feet above (or below) where I had to go. The numbers displayed went well into seven digits.

I did eat Chinese food; it was in rose light. Katy and I shared the fork. And towards the end of my dream, I'm in a thrift store; I've been there only in dreams—but a lot—and the store always has merchandise significant to my history in a vague kind of "I think I recall distant relative X having that in her glove compartment." And the person behind the cash register is a frumpy, older, incredibly-helpful-in-that-Southern-vein, auntish woman who you would automatically allow in your house or to babysit your plants or your puppy or your children. But each time I'm here, looking through the dusty shelves crowded with artifacts from my past, I come across something I cannot place—and it's always so heavy. When I lift it off the shelf I can barely pick it up. I carry it over to the woman, cutting a path through merchandise: my sister's rusted Schwinn; the basket unweaved into holes in spots; my mother's collection of ceramic ducks, cheap and glued over and over again from breaking them during countless moves; my dress from prom, satin and heavy with dry rotted straps.


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