WHITE FEATHERS

The room is lined with white feathers. Floor, ceiling, walls. I am missing my left leg.

Hard to say when I arrive here. Am born here, probably. A bed sits in the center of the room; this is the locus of my activity. Which is: sleep. And the study of it. And the study of dreams.

Obviously, with no door and no window, normal exploration or escape is unlikely. And so Dream remains the single gateway still available to me. The single avenue for study.

When I awake from a heavy, savage dream, the feathers are erect. Pointing at me, like little sentinels. When I awake from a light and airy dream, from a dream barely sketched, the feathers are shrunken and shiver like scared little mice.

I can generally control the orientation of my dreams by these two actions:

• Removing my pillow and placing it underneath my single foot (to induce calm, flaccid dreams).

• Placing my pillow beneath my bed at the approximate location of my belly (to induce unpleasant, heavy dreams).

Not every dream can be so categorized, of course. Dialectical thinking has its limits. Occasionally, dreams arrive without any obvious structural density attached. Before these dreams, hardness and softness remain alien. I have need of other terms to describe them, yet I do not have these terms. And I still do not.

Ah, but I haven’t told you yet of the manifestations, have I? A common feature of these dreams. For instance: on July 27th, a dream of an ocean-going vessel is recorded. Upon waking, one starfish, five jellies, and a half of a calcified squid limb are waiting by the seventh wall, surrounded by lingering moistness. They last only a few seconds, then the floor absorbs them. But it is long enough. Long enough to know.

And I eat them sometimes, too. When I move fast enough, I can get a bite in. Maybe two. They taste exotic, fancy. Generally speaking, they cease to exist before they leave my mouth. Or flicker out of reality about halfway down my esophagus. And so real caloric intake is always out of the question. But still–the taste remains. And the memories.

I do have one problem, though. A little “trouble in paradise.” And that is: my bedsores.

They have been spreading since last Tuesday. All red, and gaping. An affront to my feathers, and this overbearing whiteness. They don’t stop at my body’s limits, either. They continue on. Infect the golden bed frame, break out on the blue sheets. Crawl across the floor, and climb avian walls. They move slightly. And even sometimes pucker. I think I can hear words. A sort of incantation. An old radio recording. It makes me feel very strange when it hits my twin ears. Vibrates my brain, just ever so slightly.

And I can feel it rewriting me. Those pinkish words. I can feel myself reassembled.

It strips away the walls. The ceiling. The floor.

Beyond it, a sky—

all purples, all pinks.

I find myself inside a living god.

The room was only a shapeshifter. Merest lie.

Or? A white blood cell.

But the sea of urine breaches a fourth wall.

(Encouraged by all limbless dogs.)

And then?

I am reabsorbed.