the zoo

There is a moment when I wake from each dream in the series, pausing in the dark room and adjusting to the drapes as I fumble for my watch. It is New York in them, autumn. I am on high floors. All of the lights are off. There are feats of strength. There are gunshots, plans, schemes, tiny voices in my head telling me to turn left or right. In one, a truck of giant spaghetti is dumped into a river, and gets cooked in the cold water somehow then draped across a log that spans a waterfall. In another I find an extra room in my apartment, an apartment I never actually lived in.

The sky and the river are cold and flat.
The air is hard and cold but the door to the balcony is left open. We huddle against each other under the comforter, feeling that pressure to bear the cold for a taste of fresh air until the very end, until we become zoo animals under dirty glass.
I curl my feet under hers, and then she curls hers under mine.

Headaches are pressed aside.
Coffee tastes bitter.
The apartment is a cascading mess and a pair of new shoes stand in a doorway, practically talking to me.

I wander the rooms, restless after everyone has gone to sleep.