Wednesday, April 22, 2009

I was on one side of a graveled road, my brother was on the other. Behind him was an old dormant filbert grove. I was holding a baseball bat. He threw me a perfect pitch, and I hit the ball deep into the grove. He ran off to look for it. The ball had hooked to the right, so I started walking in that direction down the road. After I’d walked about half a mile, I came to a restaurant. My brother was there. He said he couldn’t find the ball. There was a short line of people waiting to scrub their hands at a shiny metal sink. Behind the counter, my daughter was on a gurney, about to have a baby. I had no idea she was expecting. I hurriedly washed my hands. Somehow, even though I had never seen them before, I assumed the people ahead of me were her in-laws. There were no towels. I shook the water from my hands. I went behind the counter. My daughter was gone. A nurse told me they had taken her in already. I went back and washed my hands a second time. I went outside, and after walking a few feet across a wet lawn, I realized my hair and beard were covered with thick white spider webs. The more of them I removed, the more there were. I came to the corner of another building. I noticed something shiny by the foundation. When I bent down to look at it, a bright-green spider crawled into my hair.

2 comments:

bam said...

I sense a kinship with your dreams.

William Michaelian said...

Thank you. Sometimes I wonder if I’m dreaming them, or if they’re dreaming me.