a dream

I had a dream the other night
in which I was walking up a long staircase.
The stairs were a carved stone, a kind of tan block cut unevenly from a rock
. Each one had moss growing around the corners, and embossed into the front of it was a word.
It was carved into the face of the stone in a very official, western typeface sort of way.
It was like Times New Roman dyed black embedded into these primeval stones.
The words didn’t form any cogent sentences or thoughts. “PRIDE” one would say and then “MOUTH” and another would read “ORIGIN”.

And I walked up these steps, reading each word.
After a time, I craned my neck up to see where the staircase was leading, and it was just an infinite point in a misty white horizon.
The stairs never ended.
They faded into infinity.

“Oh,” I thought, “This is like that thing I wrote about before. The thing about the fae making you climb endless staircases in your dreams. If they show up here, I’m not eating any chocolate, I can tell you that much-“

I realized it was a dream and I woke up.

My girlfriend was in bed next to me. She was under the warm blankets with me and just about to put her phone away to fall asleep.
I started explaining this strange dream to her.
She looked back at me with love and understanding.
Something was off, though. Something was wrong.
I told her about the almost Mesoamerican steps, how nature had grown up into the corners. Heavy imprints of words that didn’t describe anything coherent.
I was climbing and mostly liking it until i realized it didn’t make any sense.
Something was off.
She didn’t say anything back.
And then I realized I was wearing my winter jacket while sleeping in bed.
I had a heavy black jacket on in bed.
Why would I be wearing my winter jacket while sleeping-

Then I woke up for real. That last moment was also a dream. I sat up with a kind of violence. I did not like that! I sat awake for about 90 minutes. Trying to think about anything that couldn’t become a nightmare.

i fell asleep again
my beautiful wife was in bed next to me
when i woke in the morning
and went to get us some coffee