Two Dreams

Can you imagine me now?

Imagine me

At a hotel

A nice hotel

Not like when I used to call you

Out of my mind

Scraping together enough money

From white envelopes

To live a few days

In a strange city

Trying to make friends
Wherever I could

Now I’m just traveling

Taking trips

Real trips

Not caring if I meet anyone at all

I take my sketchpad

And I walk around

And draw whatever I see

And whatever I’d like to see

When I’m done I go home

And yes, I have a home

And yes, it’s mine

Bought it on an upswing

And paid for it

On the comedown

Wasn’t easy, but I did it

There’s furniture

There are curtains on the windows

Sometimes there’s even food

In the fridge

And sometimes I cook it

And sometimes it goes bad

But I hear that happens to people

Even when they aren’t

Total screw-ups

But sometimes nothing goes bad

And sometimes I clean my floors

And sometimes I hang my clothes up

And most of the time

Even when it’s a mess

It’s the same kind of mess

You’d find in any other house

Can you imagine that?

I have a bank account
I pay my taxes

I have a general practitioner

And I make dentist appointments

And get my oil changed

And I have--

Wait for it

--A plant

A real one

And I’ve kept it alive

For the past six months

And even though it’s one of those plants

That you really can’t kill

Because it can absorb water

It’s sort of like a cactus

But it’s not a cactus

Because I didn’t want anything

With pins or pricks in my house

But it’s sort of like that

A succulent

It’s called a succulent

And I’m its parent

I’m responsible for it

A living thing

Isn’t that wild?

Can you imagine that?

I’m sitting here in a hotel
And I wanted to call you

Because I knew you’d never believe me

If you didn’t hear my voice

You probably won’t believe me anyway

And I don’t blame you

There was a time....

There was a time

When I wouldn’t have believed it either

Me

Here

This

Like this

Any of it

And I think not being able to imagine it

Was part of what kept me

From having it

One night I fell asleep

And I had two dreams

One where I wound up okay

And one where I wound up dead

And the two dreams were happening

At the same time

Like on two back-to-back movie screens

And I liked one movie

A lot better than the other

Plus I saw that it could happen

I didn’t have to imagine it anymore

Now I’m here

And it’s not the first dream

But it’s not the second one either

And that’s good enough for me

For now

Until my imagination gets a little better

Until I can dream

Of something else