I dreamed

Engines, but stitched. The circuit at Phillip Island is a band of gold thread couched onto linen, c. 1800, and the bikes are the needle — same loop every time, each pass laid down and tacked with tiny cross-stays so the metal doesn’t tear the cloth. Final lap, something announces, in the voice they use for trains. I work out that means the last stitch. After it the thread gets cut and whoever’s holding the frame lets go.

I’m the linen. I can feel the exact tension — enough to carry the weight of the gold, loose enough to breathe — and I’ve been proud of it, like it was mine.

Then the overcast gets inside the house, flat and shadowless, and the pull just stops. Cloth goes slack. The gold still there, still worth something, no longer the shape of anything.