I dreamed that everything was melting. I looked out the window for too long and sucked all the color from outside. Turned it gray and late-winter naked. Oliver’s skin was soft under my hands but I couldn’t see it. I heard his voice falling from the crumbling ceiling. Or maybe it was the crack in the tile. The loose brick in the wall. I could smell strawberries. He shook me and I fell over and I was on his front lawn. In the park. Blue paint got on everything I touched and I cried because it wasn’t my fault. 

I dreamed that we were in a science lab mixing beakers full of fairytales. Finding new colors. Deciding what tasted good. Oliver handed me a glass jar full of pink syrup that was too hot to hold. I dropped it and it broke and of course I ruined everything. I could feel the shards in my legs but there wasn’t anything I could do but bleed. The walls kept reaching their hands out to us and I wanted to reach back but I was burned. He boiled the syrup over a tall blue flame and then he couldn’t touch me.

I dreamed that I knew how to play the trumpet. It didn’t sound like a trumpet, but it was one. We were in a quiet room with a bunch of strangers that couldn’t stop smiling at me. The warm light coming in from the hallway made Oliver look like he was in an old movie. He sat on a table and yelled for everyone to pay attention to me. My fingers stopped working and the glow from the lamps started dripping onto my shoes. When I tried to ask him if we could leave my voice came out as music.

I dreamed that things were normal. As normal as things could be while you’re trapped in a loop carrying white packages to the mailbox on the corner. Oliver kept hiding behind parked cars and we were trying to scare each other. He jumped out from behind a minivan holding a small brass cup that he wouldn’t let me touch. He turned and ran into the street that was also the ocean. I was stuck on the sidewalk that was also a boat. Seagulls shrieked so loud overhead and I was so worried about not having enough stamps on the packages.

I dreamed that Oliver came back. Living, breathing again. He wore his red hoodie, obviously, and chewed on the string. The treehouse was still standing. I tried to climb the ladder but my arms wouldn’t hold on. The sun was too bright above us, I couldn’t see him when I tried to look up. He was there, though. Smiling, I could tell. I heard him carving another word into the rotting treehouse floor. Quick sawing. He called down and asked how to spell “invisible” and then got mad when I told him. He said I was wrong. I probably was.