For Emily Maloney
The time has come to wreath a new dream laureate in feathers. A special committee sifts through a mountain of the downy offerings from our nation’s foremost dreamers and hopeful amateurs. One of them will help us through this wakeful period, remove the densely packed bags from beneath our eyes, and lead us to a pasture of pillows and possibilities. I hope, but may not even know if I am chosen.
I sent many of the same old dreams as the year before during a last minute nap, and I did not include a SASE. There are the series of endless flying dreams I had when I was still a child, countered by more recent dreams, where I levitate, just a few inches from the ground, and must balance carefully in the wind before settling several feet away.
But sometimes the old dreams are the best. Like the one where you are typing your essay on the outstretched wings of birds, a murmuration lulled by the patter of keys. Each bird offers us new notes of narrative before taking your pages to the sky. A few feathers drift decisively along unforeseeable currents; one day our child will find this sentence, and place it in a drawer for safe keeping.
