Batten Down the Hatches

Now Playing: “Love Theme from Chinatown” by Jerry Goldsmith

They say your dreams post-rehab are especially vivid and I’ve found that to be true.

It’s hurricane season and it feels like it. I woke up to another thunderstorm with the palm trees swaying and remiss that I’d not be able to smoke my cigarette with a black coffee under such inclement conditions.

I had a dream I was visiting C. It was someplace crowded and I was in a back room, only the place looked like my elementary school library from the front and my childhood attic from the back. I found a copy of Nashville Skyline by Bob Dylan on vinyl, only his eyes were cut out, like some Haunted House decoration. No matter, I still sighed longingly when I found it.

And then the rain started to patter on the stucco ceiling and I found myself, still in the midst of the dream, wanting to relieve myself. I found a copy of one of C’s secret books she’d assign for me to read when we still spoke, something about love letters Jane Eyre had clandestinely wrote to Mr. Rochester, and I trembled and sighed and put it under my wing alongside the badly beaten copy of Nashville Skyline.

I had to remind myself I was dreaming as I had the night prior when I found myself stuck in the cramped corners of my subconscious and slowly woke up while the South Florida rain percussed against the roof and thunder clamored.