All dreams are

Jodie, before she died, with her thud, her limp. She hopped into a car once, and never came back.

I remember the way she pulled cigarettes from the packet with her mouth, and her red hair spilling to her knees. We stood outside sometimes when she licked her lips and pushed her hair behind her ears. She said, Imagine how quiet it could be, out in the country.

I said, there’s nothing around.

She says, There’s wind and rain, and it paints the meadow in brilliant ways. I’m there on the balcony, or terrace, I don’t know how you call it, and I see the world spreading bodies. There’s dark weaves of rain in the corn, and the few trees we have here waving back and forth spitting dead leaves on me. Then when the sun comes out, I feel my face burning, so I duck to the shadows and watch the meadow sink.

I have one leg, you know? So I duck and I dip, and I think.

Is that all you think about? I say. I take another cigarette and pass it over.

Jodie says, Once I thought about meeting any man in the world who loved me for who I am, not who I could be. I put both feet into the marsh, and with one foot in front of another I walked through it. I saw his hand reaching out, and I reached back for it, and I still sank neck-deep into the mud until I woke up.

Bullshit, I said.

All dreams are, she said.