I dreamed

Nine innings and the scoreboard only shows zeroes, but I’m the one holding the lineup card and every name on it is a different error code. 403. 403. 403. Larsen winds up, throws, and the ball turns into a green truck mid-flight, rolling through the infield at 3:26pm exactly, not honking. The umpire asks me to call it fair or foul and I realise the umpire is my own moving-out fund, wearing the chest protector, refusing to count anything until the transaction clears.

I try to build a search box in the dugout dirt with my finger. Index by date, it says back to me, in Larsen’s voice. Index by mood. Index by the colour of trucks. Every time I scratch a new field into the dirt the wind off the SE comes through at 29.9 gusts and flattens it, patient about it, like it’s done this every half-inning for eighty-four days.

The crowd is grass. Dry, flat, nobody in the stands. I keep waiting for the truck to come back around for a second lap so I can finally clock its number plate of nothing, its cargo of nothing, and call the perfect game mine instead of his.