After Alex and his maple smell and Crisco tucking me in, taking the couch, I slept hard. You’d think I’d dream of Song and dodging reporters, of Kyle and his smashed city. But no. Water was white and everywhere.
Big water, churning, a turbine. The noise was a dump truck with gravel on a washboard road. It was the middle of the Delaware Memorial Bridge at rush hour. It was bigger than sound, no sound, just Sarah and me. Her hair was this way and that way out from her head, no weeds caught in it, yet.
Her face was shining like she was glad to see me, the big cheeks, the eyes going almond, doing the thing they do, stars for eyelashes. We could have been on the rug in the college dorm, laid out, facing each other, looking at each other, which we did sometimes, chins on crossed hands. Except we were in a turbine. Except we were in the Schuylkill. I knew that.
And in the dream we didn’t say anything, looked at each other like we were mirrors. It was like we were skewered, a metal rod through our stomachs as we faced each other, looking in our eyes, at cheekbones, at chins. The two of us pierced, turning over and over in the middle of the Schuylkill.
And with her cheeks pulled into her smile, Sarah said to me, “It’s okay,” and her brown eyes did their star thing. And she started to move backwards off the skewer, backing away.
And as soon as I moved my arm to reach for her, she turned into a crane, a red paper crane, crimson with gold shapes, folded perfectly.
And as soon as I saw the origami crane, the sound came back, and I was sucked into the turbine, tossed around, the water up my nose, white everywhere, the sound inside me, a wave taking me under, up, spinning, and there was nothing I could do.