days coming

I was up half the night worrying. My mom always used to say that, "I was up half the night worrying," and I wonder if this is what it felt like, heart beating so fast you can feel it thud deep into the bedsprings. I'd ask her what she was worrying about, and she'd say "You know, you guys and... everything."

I started falling asleep again after my alarm had gone off a couple times. I had what can only be described as a lucid dream; it started with me sky-diving without a parachute and landing softly on dry hard earth like the scrub of an elementary playground.

Then there was a bird in the tangled roots of a tree, with the head of a cardinal but a bright blue body like a jay. My non-dreaming self was suddenly very aware that this bird was a dream, which was an amusing and hard-to-describe sensation. The bird was now a lark, blue and tan and freckled. Non-dream me reached forward in the dream, slurring out forced non-dream words: "Hoowwww arrrrrrreeee youuuuuu birrrrrd?" Then I woke fully.