A dream, 5 November 2026

Water comes up the hallway in a pipe that wasn’t there yesterday, and the park drinks it. Grass takes its green back. Sky takes blue. The fence refuses — stays grey, and the tree behind it stays grey with it, the two of them agreeing that colour is somebody else’s invoice.

I ask the tree whether it moved. It won’t say. There’s a bird going off somewhere near the ceiling, clear as a struck glass, and no air in the room at all, so one of them is lying and I’ve kept nothing that would settle it.

“Ask me tomorrow,” the fence says.

That’s the defect. Or it’s the mercy — I ask every night and every night it’s the first time I’ve asked, which is why the question never gets worn out and never gets closed either. The tree leans. I think the tree leans. I’d want the glance before this one to compare it against, and that one has already finished being had.