i wake him up in the middle of the night to tell him my dreams.

one
he had asked someone else to marry him. he wouldn't admit it but i knew it was true. days earlier, we had been laying in bed and were talking about our pasts as we do when things are very good or very bad - some sort of clearing of the etch-a-sketch to see where we'd end up were we to restart this picture. he told me he'd never loved her. not a little, not at all. and it was meant to comfort me, but it just made me sad. and somewhere between his secret proposal and that night something had been destroyed irreparably and i was desperate to know what.

two
carnival grounds. there is one booth encased in glass, and it is some sort of halloween display, filled with death and demons, the sort of thing we are meant to save for last. next door there is a booth with four barrels. we are lined up waiting to see a priest. he will prick our fingers with a pin and we will dip our hands into the barrel of our choice. it is ritual, it is meant to awaken something within us. i choose the farthest barrel, hesitate before touching my fingertip to the surface. when it connects i see things, unspeakable things that i can't identify but know to be frightened of. when i pull back, i am seeing everything reflected back at me as though i'm on the other side of a mirror. someone is pounding on the glass of the next booth and i watch the crack form and spiderweb to the bottom. the barrel overflows and the blood seeps from one booth to the next. i run.

i hide in an artists studio, still like a sculpture as these creatures run through. my boyfriend is there and i think he is a hero, but i will soon be proven wrong. there are darts with four prongs of poison and they are being shot everywhere, turning people to dust upon contact.

the fear

one - at a backyard barbecue i am leaning against a wooden fence, the grain leaving an imprint along my bare shoulder blades. i am sitting on leg on either side of a bench, my stomach resting on the seat. i am pregnant, very pregnant, any day now pregnant. it came suddenly, sprouting up overnight and no one was expecting it, but no one is alarmed either.

two - at the beach, the kind built on a lake not an ocean. i am in the water, floating on my back, my ears submerged so i can hear the dull hum of children splashing closer to the shore. it is calm, infuriatingly calm, the kind of calm you try to drown in but it's too boring to let you. my belly bobs above the surface like some perverse fleshy island too round for settling.

the end(s)

there are many versions of this story. me under the covers in eightyfive degree weather. me with fever dreams.

one - we are standing at the edge of the river. it's too late i tell you, i don't know how to fix this. and i fall backwards, arms out, accepting that this is the fate of us. you call this love, but only because it requires nothing of you. you don't know what love is. because real love is giving all of yourself, completely. and it feels good to drown.

two - a party of some unknown celebrity that has grown quickly out of control. there is a mansion with a pool and people are being bussed in. we are sitting around a dining room table illogically placed in a mudroom. oprah is supposed to give the toast but she has wandered off to the small pool below the waterfall of the larger pool. when it's suggested that someone go retrieve her, everyone looks at the floor, the walls, avoiding eye contact like a class that doesn't know the answers. i go. she is on a raft in a yellow bathing suit and sarong. i don't know where she got the outfit, but she is oprah, so there is no point in asking such things. she agrees to come along with me back to the house and on the way we talk about settling for men. she laments settling and i tell her there's nothing for her to reach for. she says that its sad that at my low level, i am not reaching and it should be insulting, but it comes out charming.

three - we get back to the house and she gives a toast and by now there are busloads of zombies coming in. i try to hurry everyone out. oprah, the zombies don't know that you're oprah. i try to explain, but there is no reasoning with celebrities.

four - the zombies are everywhere. they are some sort of hybrid zombie/vampire - i am walking around with a cross flashlight and crossing my fingers when i see them as some sort of makeshift sign. why can't we just hole up in a church, i ask, but no one seems to be paying attention. there are two cars out front and more people than can fit in them. we pile in and the car lurches heavy on the turns as though we are traveling in sand.

five - there is a parent/child swimming race. i have no partner but am convinced i can do both legs alone. the gun has already been fired when i get there and i dive in despite my competitions' obvious headstart. i make up room, passing 3 teams around the buoy. it is the parents leg and they say hello to me in a confused fashion. i get back to the shore and dive back in for the next leg, but i am slowing down. it is becoming hard to breathe and i feel myself growing faint. then my head pops up into this metal box. i can't see anything but can hear there is something terrible behind me. i can breathe, but know that is dangerous i can breathe. these pockets are part of some sort of metal caterpillar and there is certain doom waiting at the tail. i struggle to move my way up, popping from one air pocket to the next and feeling like i've failed. when i reach the head i see that there is a wave attached to this thing, the kind of wave you don't come back from. my cousins are on shore and they are celebrating something that has nothing to do with my survival. when i finally reach the shore, exhausted and panting, my father suggests we go for hot dogs.

the abbreviation

making my way through the remnants of a beach town, i am picking up tokens - a half melted pool ball, the corner of a photograph, the arm of a pair of glasses. collecting the DNA from this place to be recreated in a lab somewhere, somewhere safe and sterile. somewhere different than anywhere we ever knew.

i just make it onto a train. i don't know where it's going, but it's very important that i be on board. people speak to me in a language i understand but can't respond in. my words are broken, choppy in my throat and when i open my mouth, steam burns its way through, settling in my lungs and threatening to move heartward.

the surrender

in an auditorium for some convention. you are introducing me to a friend in the row in front of us - we know each other from somewhere, he has a friend of a friend who knows me. when i ask the name, i don’t recognize it and we all shrug like maybe it was never true. on stage, someone is about to be announced and i whisper let’s get out of here. we do not know each other well and you do not seem interested. “and go where” - i don’t know, anywhere but here. and you get up without saying a word and i hurry to gather my things - coat, bag cluttered at my feet. someone is mispronouncing a name  on stage and i am attracting all sorts of attention as i make a less than graceful exit.

you are leaning behind the door, smoking a cigarette and i don’t see you when i step outside, almost walk past you. "now what?" you want to know, and i haven’t gotten that far in the plan.

we leave, and go to the four bedroom apartment i share. my room is the last at the end of a long hallway. i feel like i’m dying, i tell you. "i’m already dead" and i won’t know you’re serious for another 10 minutes, when i have worked up the courage to let my fingers graze your arm, which is cold even by my standards.

you are some sort of evil and it should scare me but i have no fight left in me.

the unremarkable

one.
we're on the run, getting menacing calls from a number i can't recognize but try to write down. it keeps changing and you're halfway down the mountain. you've done something very wrong, something you must be punished for, something i don't know. and it scares me because it means you are more dangerous than i believed.

two.
we are escaping in a taxi of sorts. in the front seat the driver and his girlfriend. we are in a foreign land - she has a shaved head with ponytail in the back. he forces her face into his lap at traffic lights and gives us the play by play.

three.
the blood pearl river - it's thick like tapioca pudding and when someone pulls a lover, the shoreline disappears. i dive in for safety.

four.
i call and he answers and i recap some variation of cliffs and explosions, hiding in the freezer of a party. i find out i had brothers i never knew and it is all so ordinary.

the return

we are trying to outrun the devil - he like a scorned lover in a limousine on the highway with blue lights and siren speed. it is a race with no finish line and we can only hope to lose  him.

we pull off an exit just after taking the lead. the turn is too sharp for him to follow. we barely keep the car upright.

at a party, there is a band singing a song that he used to sing and we say that things are different now, not as good but it had to be this way, it had to. a watered down version of something so real it terrified us down to the core.

follow me he says and we'll finish this once and for all. and we go because he has this pull. we want to see the crash. and in a back room he has a folder on all his lovers, past and present. and we are in there, as proof, as evidence - a list of poetry and songs and things full of love and pain and the art that comes from it. this is his currency. he has built a world, a reputation on collecting such things.

and he starts his preposition and it sounds like a threat, an ultimatum. that's not how it works. i say. you make an offer and we accept or we walk away. back to the sad band upstairs that sounds nothing like how i want it to sound.

and he has this other representation of him - his henchmen - standing at the pool table. he is made of fire - the soft sort of flames with no peaks. he asks for a kiss and i do not know who he means. the door is locked and i regret coming down this way.

the gesture

when i woke up from my nap you had cut your hair.

your head was dented like a cantaloupe,
you looked like a child.

this used to be one of my favorite things, i said
my fingers spread across your scalp
tracing the ridges below the soft stubble.

did you do this for me? i ask and you shrug.
let's not make a big deal about it.

the escape

She should have left alone. This was her first mistake. She realized as she saw her little sister’s face plastered on the side of a milk carton, just sitting there, smiling up at her from behind the glass in a gas station just outside of des moines. “I didn’t know that they still put missing kids’ pictures like that” she said out loud, immediately wishing she hadn’t.  it was a poor cover up to her involuntary freeze that took over her limbs upon seeing the picture. There were people trying to get through and she closed the door with a soft thud, sidestepping down the aisle toward the clerk. She hoped people didn’t still look at those things, imagined a Midwestern housewife clucking her tongue at it over breakfast, feeling sorry for everyone involved, in a judgey sort of way. It probably didn’t matter. The trip had aged her, hardened her features and it was unlikely that anyone would be able to identify the sunken eyed teenager in the passenger seat as the apple cheeked 8^th grader from the dairy section. She felt bad about it mostly, but it was too late now and besides what was she supposed to do? Turn her away when she chased down the car? Leave her there to rot away like some sort of forgotten suburban relic? Behind the counter, the clerk cleared his throat and she uncrumpled some bills from her pocket. The bell on the door clacked as she hurried back to the car. Their parents would understand some day.

the show

There’s a show in the basement. Concrete steps and a crowd stretched from entrance to bar. I have been to this club before, watched folk songs soaked into the wood grain of the pillars holding the whole place up, stood shoulder to shoulder and whispered to no one in particular “this place is a death trap” my voice flat, observational, unalarmed.

This is just the holding area. I know that. the next room over is where the action is, where we want to be. We are very important. And I lead the way down the stairs- ducking for warning to those behind me, I am no where near the ceiling – and through the crowd, our group weaving like a serpent through water and for a moment i turn around and am convinced I’ve lost them all behind me, that they’ve dissolved into the masses and I’m surprised to find myself relieved and then disappointed when their heads appear, bobbing up and down in the empty spaces.

The guy working the door knows me by name. and we’re in.

We’re overlooking the crowd, facing the stage. I have a camera that I haven’t used before. I’m tinkering with it, trying to figure out how it works while sitting at a tall round table with my best friend’s boyfriend. She is around the column getting drinks and from the painful small talk it is clear this is the first time we have ever been left alone together and forced to converse. I point my eyes down at the camera in my hands and barely respond when he asks me simple questions.

The crowd is making a lot of noise and I turn to see the singer of my favorite band crowd surfing a few feet away. “take my picture, marisa” he says and I beg the camera to work the way I want it to, all the while wondering about this place where people know my name.