we interupt this poetry challenge

to jot down a dream. quick note.

the day has ended quickly. it is getting dark, quickly. i am in some sort of camping site with buildings, leaving it, and noticing all the sounds, how the wind comes around the corners, some clink of wire on metal, leaves rustling on the concrete, and gathering, the textural sound of their scurrying panning left and right. i think one of the sound students with some very high-end equipment could capture this, would know how. it's a complete soundscape - the rest just a means to generate it. it is gorgeous but in an utterly desolate way.
I feel very much alone.

I go to a place where there might be people. there is just one, Jerry the tech guy at school, who in the dream is leaving. he suggests I stay in his box. it's a cubicle with other apartment things attached to it in one unit. it has a sink, a plate, a computer room I could stay in and lock for the night. he drives off in a gigantic truck. i see that there is a glossy magazine with a review of my last show mixed in and I think of stealing it, knowing no one else will care. i find roses I had bought for myself earlier and forgotten. they are all dried out with a couple of still fresh yellow roses at the bottom.

I leave the cubicle, walking back in the last light towards where I'd come from, I didn't know why. I have a little phone with me tied around my neck that rings and it's my brother's voice - exactly and exactly as it would have been. He is pleading to know how things are going with my sister's rehab. I cannot believe a message came back from so long ago and I marvel at the intensity of it, the moment of it. Just then he actually comes up and is very distressed. He had been running on a beach (the Amagansett beach, I imagine) and said "there was trouble on the beach." He was mugged. He has black pieces of tape here and there on his arms and is very upset. He goes on to tell the story that a group of kids were selling stuff, computer or camera things, dunno and he was intrigued and took the bottom out of his saving box and they saw his fifteen hundred dollars. Then they took it. He was mad at himself but okay. As we walked I could hear the next message on my phone start and I turned it off.

We are together in a minute by the lake with my sister. My brother tries to tell her the story but gets upset when she turns her head, thinking she oblivious and elsewhere. From where I am, I could see that she was listening, very intently, and just turned her head to concentrate on exactly what he was saying. I ask, "Can I say something?" and I say "I just want to say how proud I am that you're sober, that you're here." She stands up and backs cautiously away from me down the wooden boardwalk by the lake. She says, "No. No, don't say that. That makes me completely uncomfortable" and she dives into the lake.