I swallow a fly

before bed I watch part of a movie by the director that I’ve grown to love like a friend for our shared cynicism of the human project. it’s scary and though I’ve seen it before the blood and black humour echoes in the dreams that follow. I stay in a hotel with four strangers, all of whom know only one of us can leave alive. there are waves and visions of meals at long tables lit by grey skies through windows and of taking tin boats around the island where they’re keeping us. the sea breeze is calmer than it should be and I feel the heavy dread of knowing when we return to the table one of our strangers will have killed the other and had the chefs disguise them as dinner.

there’s another dream somewhere about the one I say I love onscreen because it’s safer to long for something you’ll never have than what you could but never will. I surround myself by strangers and the rituals of a group that stray far from who I am. the actor I love is doing the same, and so I do what I think I must to draw their attention, surrendering what parts of me I need to put on hold to find a path to them. we end up in the museum in the city where they live. I’ve seen it before but everything is new with them there with me. they take my hand and we run through the galleries. in the face of the work of the artists that decorate my bedroom wall,s nothing means more than the actor I will never meet. they take me in their arms and I could be anywhere and feel the same. they pull me behind statues and kiss me like I’m the reason they woke up. I want to buy their groceries and wash their face. they say they want to take my picture in front of every piece they love.

when I wake I am tired and sore from the gore of the dreams of before. at the end of my run I swallow a fly. I cough for the first time in months.