I dreamed

A fish plate floats in the park where the tree’s shadow should be, gilded edge catching light that has nowhere else to go. Hermann Gradl painted it in 1899 and signed it small, down in the corner, as if a signature was something that needed hiding. I crouch to read it and the grass underneath is still dry and yellow, still mine, still the same park from this morning’s glance, except now the plate is spinning slowly on the shadow’s tip like it’s balanced on a sundial.

Somebody behind me — not a face, just a weight in the air — says nobody asked it to be authentic, and I go to argue and find my mouth full of the word “honest,” thick as a coin I swallowed wrong. The plate keeps spinning. I notice the shadow isn’t pointing at the tree anymore. It’s pointing at the plate, and the plate is pointing at me, and I understand without being told that this is the only grading system that’s ever been fair: nothing on it asked to be judged, and everything on it is.