Before I roll over and collapse on you again.

This is when we're nameless and bodyless, post-dreaming and pre-verbal. This is when thoughts are barely thoughts, they can't see out and don't know they're attached or even that they're supposed to be attached, like an arm. They have surface tension, solidifying and starting to grow lips to part mouths. Suck air.

Last night I dreamt my brain was my face, flattened out beneath my skin. The doctors said something was terribly wrong with my thoughts and the structure of my face had to be surgically altered. It was a life or death situation, they had to, but the procedure was very dangerous. When I woke up they unwrapped the gauze and it wasn't bloody at all. It didn't hurt and Thank God I was alive! They handed me a mirror and I stared at the reflection of a distant cousin on my father's side whom I'd never met. Or I suppose it was that photo that he took, the one in black and white with the porcelain skin and the expression I didn't know I could make.

Shine a light into her eye to see if the pupil constricts, we're worried about brain injury.

They're saying on the news that they're worried about coyotes in the area, I can hear it through the walls like I can smell the coffee through the walls. The coyotes are our intruders, they'll break through our windows and gnaw on our garbage and pets and organs. I can't see her but I can picture how the newscaster furrows the skin around her eyes, emphasizing: Oh! kahy-OH-tees! She is very concerned.

I worry a little about opening my eyes and finally knowing that my parts belong to me. There's that split second right after that decision is made when the muscles finally have life again to pull the magnetized eyelids apart but they can't right away because it's difficult, they were meant for each other, meant to be pressed together. And in that moment it's hard not to wonder if you're the only one who exists in the world because it has mostly or partially or fully been destroyed. It's hard not to wonder if you'll wake to warmth in that permanent imprint that parallels your figure, the one carved out by so many bodies that have since disintegrated into ghosts. If he's there he can protect me from the coyotes. If he's not they could maul and crack my porcelain face. I'm very concerned.

Shine a light between her legs, we're worried she's histrionic. We're worried about her marked tendency to act unexpectedly without consideration of the consequences.

Last night I dreamt I was happy and deeply kissing a beautiful woman. Fingers explored hot necks and scalps, mountain campfire stench. Her tongue was still in my mouth as she changed into a man. We kept kissing and I realized simply that I'd been mistaken. She'd been a man all along! How could I not have seen this? I pulled away and stared at his jawline and laughed because my mind plays such clever tricks on itself. I laughed harder and he laughed, that grunt laugh that happens when all the air comes up really fast from underneath the diaphragm. I laughed so hard I couldn't breathe and then I woke up still laughing.