i dream i'm visiting my family but their house is a different one, dated heavy brick/wood and out in the country. in my care are three small birds, each a different color, that i bring inside and say i need to look after. at some point two of the birds are startled and fly away from me, and i scramble to catch the black and orange one on the mantle except my family's dog has seen it too, and beats me to it by inches. i think, oh no, oh no, and there is a wet crunch in the dog's mouth. i feel just terrible. the dog keeps crunching my little bird's bones. i try to be okay with it, and let it go.
when i'm not dreaming there's a chasm in my chest-area that i keep tumbling into unless i distract myself. it's okay and it won't last forever. all day i have random, vivid memories of rooms i was in as a child. the kitchen of my family friends' grandma's house in ogallala. i walk to and from work and around downtown lincoln like i have for the past few years. i remember the auditorium of tri county k-12 school. at lunch i sit in sp ce reading comic books, scooting my chair across the floor to keep my face in the sun as it moves across the wall in the afternoon. i remember how my parents' friend cindy taught me how to get an eyelash out of your eye by holding the lid outward and blinking. i think about what to do with my life, about what it would be to get a new job and move somewhere alone. it seems terrifying but like a strength i could have if i needed to. i write in my little red book and it's all dumb rambling. i haven't tried to write love poems yet, because they feel too magical/powerful, but i will soon. i try to tell people how i'm feeling but it comes out as "i'm crazy, sorry, i'm crazy, i'm fine".
in a dream i go to my childhood friend courtney's house, in the country again. there are brown horses wandering outside, a sturdy woman lets us in and i go to the basement. people my age are hanging out like a party. some things are normal but in other places there are sloping pits in the floor with plates of bent metal, and metal railings on the stairs with a gap you have to squeeze your skull through to get by. i cut off half of my toe on something on the floor and it bleeds and aches. i try to bandage it. the people i'm with frown at it but don't really help. i keep going ow, it hurts, and looking down to see half of my toe flapping off, then hanging by a thin strip of skin, then the half separates from me. these other pretty girls who are there happen to have packages of medical gauze and neosporin, which they give to me with drunken sympathy. i dress the wound and go upstairs. there are tabby cats and kittens on the kitchen table. i go outside and cindy's husband pat is there, shirtless and very muscular. they are castrating the horses, weirdly. the screaming horses are tied down to the ground and they cut off their testicles, then dump wheelbarrows of smoldering embers and ash on the wound. i leave to waking.
