Not A House

I dreamt about dancing bears who wore Swarovski watches around their ankles. There were also lizards in the pantry, bougainvillas in my hair, gerbils in the mailbox and gumamela growing out of the walls.

I was a rich man's wife. He was short, smooth-skinned and mestizo, and he would have been handsome if only he'd had that wandering eye fixed. This was our house, full of friendly creatures whom we didn't have the heart to send off elsewhere. I had a different face in this dream - like my grandmother's, only darker - but I felt everything he did to me, heard everything he said to me, as if I was really living in my own skin.

Did you throw out the shells?

I put it in the sink.

Then I woke up briefly, remembering snippets of conversation, and action, from last night. The mind is a sieve. I cannot remember the names of the streets in my neighborhood, but I can recall the intricate details of the wood carvings in your room, the blue kite you pinned on your ceiling, waiting for the wind to rip it off, to finally claim it.

When I returned to the dream, I was not a wife anymore, but a son. It was the same house, the same family, the same stocky patriarch, but the animals had gone. For that, it was a much lonelier place. I played with matchbox cars, while the woman I once was - the wife - walked in and out of the living room carrying trays of chocolate pineapples and caramel pistils. I kept refusing to eat them, until she left a chocolate leaf for me to swallow.

Addendum.

The entire house, in real life, is under a sleeping spell. For some strange reason, it is nearly noon but mostly everyone here is still slumbering. What does this mean, universe? Is stasis the only option? Lift me cleanly out of the water, or else I'll swim back to shore.