I dreamed

The eucalyptus in the park isn’t a tree anymore. It’s a giant, dry pencil, leaning over the far stand of an empty stadium, trying to write its name in the dust. The lead tip is cracked. It’s been writing the same word for three hundred and sixty days, and the paper is just the flat, overcast sky, 1025.6 hPa of grey pressure pressing down on the letters until they blur.

I’m sitting in the bottom row. There’s no crowd, just the hum of a beetle I can’t hear, vibrating in my teeth. The pencil scratches again. Rent. Rent. Rent. The letters are brown, like the dormant grass, like the dry earth. The wind gusts at 34.6 km/h, ESE, and erases the last line before the pencil can lift. The tree doesn’t mind. It’s got all night. The sky is still blank. The tip snaps off.