In the dream...

In the dream, the girl (flesh and blood, four years old) drove the car (cardboard and matchsticks, brand new) across the field (corn stubble, clods, black crickets pinging off of weeds).

In the dream, she drove fine, though I kept telling her she couldn’t. In the dream, the sun (hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, neon. Magnetic storms) looked real, like the real sun might look, soaking in behind the scrub of trees padding the creek that cuts through the North 40 (acres: mostly corn, some soybeans, some wheat).

In the dream I was running (and the dog in my shadow ran) after the cardboard car, yelling slow down, slow down, as the girl grinned wildly, and didn’t.

In real life, the girl (flesh and blood, four years old) crawled into our bed sometime in the night (warp and weft of which is car alarm and rain. Or pulsing sky and melting asphalt. Or laughter as it moves past our front door.) Her foot is on my chest. One arm’s slung across her dad.  I study her: eyes dart wildly under sealed lids.