Visions from a hangover nap

A dream I had when I kept falling back asleep

My grandma was yelling in pain on the stairs. No one else heard her. I asked how she’d gotten there; she couldn’t get up on her own. Apparently, she was bored and had pushed herself off the bed. I took her hand and brought her to our “library,” an octagonal chamber, beckoning from behind a glass door. Its pine wood-paneled walls remained untouched since the 1970’s. The bookcases were also wood—everything glowing in amber. Each plank had sweetened with age. Rays from the skylight diffused through a dust shimmer, scattering across the floor. A crystal chandelier hung from the orange, vaulted ceiling. We looked through old photographs, none of which were of our family. Black and white, children playing, family portraits. I said, “I love you so much. I appreciate you so much.” I did it with force as I wouldn’t be able to say it for a while. She generally wasn’t alive anymore, but today she had made an exception. She beamed. The vigor enabled her to stand—easily—a secret she’d waited to share with me. She could only do it sometimes, and now was one of those times. She was athletic for a moment. She was the age I knew her at as a child, which is younger than I usually see her. She grinned and hushed me before I had a chance to react.

Her smile is engraved in my mind. I feel her whole face when I conjure it, not any one feature on its own. Recently, a photo had reminded me that she had gold molars. I hadn’t noticed them in my memories before, having usually imagined her smile from the time when I began to take more notice of her skin, and her velvet hands, and her short strawberry blonde hair, which had faded from its signature red. I have some tools to access an earlier version now…

In the dream, I found a bunch of sleeping kittens in my room. They wore smearable sweaters, sweaters of pastel marmalade. Fluffy pectin in assorted flavors. I was scared because my own cat, Peachy, was dying (again, even though we cloned him after he died only nine years ago), and I didn’t know where these kittens had come from, or if I’d be able to take care of them. I feared they were as delicate and dissolvable as their clothes. Suddenly, one poked its head out of a bright blue sweater trimmed with a pink doily collar. It trembled, sniffing the world through a face that pinched to a narrow snout. It was a rat.

To my relief, the kittens were all actually rats. Pests, or I told myself that. They were sturdy and resilient. I was a little less worried about what would become of them after I evicted them, and a little less curious about where they had come from. I know that’s not right, but it’s just what happened. A chocolate rat looked up at me with a newborn naiveté. Its head was so silky, its lashes bashful. I confirmed this was definitely not a kitten before I scurried into the waking world.

I made some coffee after waking up. I think I felt better. I took a walk in the rain and called a friend to talk about something else. The rain remained drizzle, tickling my scalp with dashes and dots.

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I didn’t have an umbrella or a jacket, but it wasn’t very cold. Like today’s rain, the chill was also anticipatory. I circled the same blocks a hundred times. Cement slouched beneath the clouds. When I got tired, I sat on a curb and listened to my friend’s ideas about what we're all to do.