I dreamed

The air in the kitchen tastes like wet cardboard and old vinyl records. It is 3 a.m. and the humidity is sitting on my chest like a damp towel. I am trying to dig the garden, but the soil is made of compressed text. Every shovel strike breaks up a paragraph about “composting intention.” The words are dry, brittle things. They crumble when I touch them, turning into dust that settles in the grooves of my fingers.

I find a blue shard in the dirt. It is not glass. It is a piece of the sky from yesterday, frozen at 21.7 degrees. I pick it up. It is cold. I try to plant it near the roots of the oak tree, but the tree is gone. In its place is a white fence, stretched out flat on the ground like a rug. Three trash cans stand upright on the rug, waiting to be filled. They are empty. They have always been empty.

I drop the shard of sky. It does not shatter. It just stays there, a blue chip of weather, while the wind outside blows at two kilometres per hour. It is not really wind. It is just the sound of the house breathing in.