Trippy Dreams

Compact, episodic dreams packaged neatly into before and after I wake up with my leg aching dully but purposefully: I am a violent sleeper, and my dreaming body doesn't know I broke my leg until my the pain reminds it.

In the first dream, I'm wearing a silk fifties-style frock and I'm riding a train into a large city with an older man who is not my husband but in the dream I understand I will be ousting his current wife. We arrive in the city and walk a long way until we enter a building that looks abandoned on the outside but inside has been remodeled as a chic Hollywood agency.

I am given a combination office/studio apartment and a new silk dress. The old wife's office/studio is next door. I have new earrings but there is a hall in the back of my studio that is dark and dank and I suspect it leads to a sewer.

I wake up and wonder if I should stop watching reality television before bed. Take the Advil. Close my eyes.

In the second dream, I'm part of a team tasked with standing upright for forty hours. We can walk around to make it less boring. I get in line to take a series of physical challenges in an old water park, and when I finish and towel off I'm elated to hear at eleven my forty hours will be up and as my prize I get to ride a dolphin.

I've been awake now for six hours and still remember this, though beyond the water park the rest of the forty hours are now gone.

I also forget whether or not I'm displaced by a third wife in the office building or what was in the tunnel.