IN DREAMS
I.
In the beginning, a possum sneaks into the house through the front door. I’ve never seen a possum in real life, but it kind of looks like the ones from Over the Hedge. Probably a possum. No one else seems to care just yet. It crawls beneath the couch that my brother’s now-dead hamster chewed a hole in that one time. It’s going to die under there, I say, and it’s going to smell god-awful. Don’t worry about it, they say. So I don’t. But of course I do. Even in dreams I worry so much. I can feel it wasting away. Time passes. Let’s come back to this one later.
II.
Everybody wants me when I’m dreaming. Once I had a boyfriend who was really sweet to me, but he was actually just this B-list actor I saw in a movie once. We sat around a patio table with some friends—it looked a lot like the one my family’s got at home but it was round rather than rectangular. It’s always something like that—a table that’s round when it should be rectangular—that reminds you where you are. Sucks, because we got along really well. Me and my made-up boyfriend. I feel a benign shame, acknowledging the depths of my desire. I feel a more vicious shame dreaming of someone I know for real. I’m sorry to make you do this. I know you don’t think of me like that, if you think of me at all. I’m sorry for wanting so much and so often. I just need love and somebody to kiss. These dreams always remind me of that song by The Smiths. Last Night I Dreamt that Somebody Loved Me. It’s upsetting, really, to have something in common with Morrissey.
III.
So I live in New York City and I have a baby. Everybody wants to look at it. They lean in and they coo and they ask me questions I don’t have answers to. It’s not even my baby, I tell them. It’s just me. Literally, it’s me, as a baby. Is it bad that the only kid I can imagine having is myself?
I carry this thing everywhere—the subway, the hot dog stand, the loft party hosted by a friend of a friend. It—she—is heavy, and won’t lie still. She kicks out her legs, the same stubby length as her arms. I sense that she is going to spit up on my shirt before she does it. I tap her chest lightly and she does, indeed, spit up on my shirt. It’s gonna be hard to replace. I got it at a vintage shop for thirty dollars. At the party, everyone’s smoking indoors and clinking beers and asking if it’s okay for her to be here. Yeah, I say. Yeah, she’s fine. She spits up again and she cries and I am exhausted. I am vaguely humiliated because everyone can see how self-involved I am. Not that they couldn’t before. But now they really know. Now you know.
IV.
I often find myself running. This time, I run to the old apartment. The door is wide open so I go inside. That I’ve accidentally left the door unlocked for a third time. The place is a mess and I’m going: shit, we’ve been robbed. The TV is missing. All our decorations have been torn down. I see the couch—brown instead of blue—and I remember that I don’t live here anymore. I feel this urge to sit in the middle of the floor and cry or something. All of a sudden I miss everybody and everything. It's the worst thing in the world to let go. Another time, I’m at a house party. People I haven’t thought about in years are here. There are colourful LED lights on, the way there always are at these things. Me and an old friend are leaning against a bannister drinking coolers. I start missing him too, because this isn’t real.
I ask him what it means that he’s here.
What? he says.
I mean, like, of all the people in the world. Do you think it’s a sign or something?
He tells me not everything means something else. He tells me my sentimentality is killing my sincerity. I tell him I can’t let go of that either.
V.
The stench of the possum begins to take on a certain edge that lets me know it’s really dead. Daddy, I think you have to get rid of it now. My dad reaches under the couch with the green rake from the garage and feels for the corpse. He drags it out and its body is so still. There’s a beat. Well, it’s dead, I say. Just like I told you.
Whatever that means.
Photos by Charlie Zacks.
GABRIELLE COLE:
“IN DREAMS” was edited by Charlie Zacks and Kat Mulligan.
MAXWELL NORMAN’S ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Ichiko Aoba - Luminescent Creatures (2025)
The barest buds of grass begin peeking through the browns and grays of winter. Looking outside, you might even expect to see a cardinal soon, darting flash of red to brighten the white sky. While we remain in its earliest days, spring is marching toward us. Fitting, then, that Ichiko Aoba blesses us with another piece of pastoral perfection, this time inspired by the subtropical forests and vivid seascapes of Japan’s Ryukyu Islands. The album title fits perfectly; every song here absolutely glows and thrums with life. Quiet acoustic meditations like “tower” and “FLAG” drift by on gentle breezes. More ornately crafted tunes with strings and woodwinds to buttress their melodic power (such as “COLORATURA” and “Lucifèrine”) stand as a canopy of ivy-covered trees. This is my favorite album of the year so far, gently gorgeous and brimming with both whimsy and melancholy.
GET HIP
McGill Black Student Network Library, a good resource for locating and borrowing books by Black authors. The BSN Library is currently looking for volunteer staffers. Anyone can sign up.
Black Writers Matter, edited by Whitney French, is an incredible collection of works by contemporary Black writers. You can order the E-Book or the paperback via University of Regina Press.
CLEAR YOUR CALENDARS MARCH 22.