I Still Dream

I still dream. I had one, or a series of them. Not last night, what would night be like, the suns are always here. In the dream I was a comet, made of fire, I could feel myself burning my way through the interplanetary medium, toward the Planet M—-. I could not burn up in its atmosphere when I would get there because I was already burning. Then I remembered I need oxygen to burn at all, and to breathe. The flames of my nucleus constricted, froze as if into ice and withered away into the interplanetary medium because I didn't have the oxygen to sustain them, or to sustain myself. A tight pressure on my chest. Chest? Sleep paralysis, I had that. Who? Who had that? Comets don't sleep. I try to break free, but my nucleus and tail are gone and I'm approaching the surface of the planet, drifting down like a snowflake—am I what's left of the comet?–onto the protruding and ready proboscis of some youngling on Planet M—. 

A series of dreams. I melt into the youngling, who wonders what it would be like to live on one of the planets that orbited far away and had both suns in its sky at once. There were creatures of words, and even thoughts, on those planets too. This youngling would be a trader, to bounce around the planets and moons exchanging the trinkets and curiosities and commodities unique to each planet but not to each other. This youngling would be a circuit performer, bringing the latest all-immersive theater to the furthest reaches of the star system. This youngling would be an engineer, assigned a ship as if it were a youngling of his own. 

In the dream I am the youngling, uncomfortable in my body and the alien shape of it. It's not my body, it is Planet M—--’s. This youngling would be a fighter pilot in the inner solar system. This youngling would be a foot soldier for the occupations. This youngling would be a miner in the asteroid zone. But this youngling is not me. 

Another dream. I am falling but I am not moving. I am falling into nothing. I try to hold on against the falling but it stretches me apart. I am falling in place and I am getting torn apart and I am falling apart. Like a wind blowing over me from all directions and into all of them. I open my mouth to yell but I have no mouth. I am a mouth and the wind blows through me and the wind is me. 

My childhood neighborhood. The alley we were never allowed down, but it extends a great distance down the hill, into the neighborhoods below, not as I remember them but as I dreamed them since then, with the accoutrements of childhood imagination and yearning, bright lights, colorful blocks, deep mines—My dream. Then the pounding returns. Thump. Thump thump. The mines. The alley. Alley? The neighborhood. Planet M—-. The suns. The other planets, the asteroid zone. My neighborhood. Thump, thump, the pounding in my head. But I can't be awake yet. I haven't been awake yet. 

-I’m shocked you fell asleep already, with so much feeding into you for you to process, and more all the time. 

-Where did you go?

-The ship left but it returned. 

-You said you were me.

-I didn't know how hard you'd hold on to a sense of self. I'm you, because I'm being transmitted into you right now. 

-The pounding.

-The scientists message.

-To who?

-They think there's a universe on the other side of this one.

-Is there? Is that my universe? Can I return?

-Again, you're the black hole. 

Then the pounding returned. My eyes tight shut, dark completely. Thump, thump thump, thump. Thump thump. As if I were emerging from a dream again. Wake up!!

-Black holes don't sleep, focus. 

The voice of the wireless signal has returned, and the scratches on my surface before they fed the void inside me. Light and radio signals and the hum of the universe.