Last night I dreamt I was pregnant. I was pregnant and I was pretty cool with it until I hit nine months. Then I went batshit. It was as if I had just started realizing I was carrying a child in my body and that I would have to take care of it and teach it and raise it and be a pillar of support and so forth and so forth. It was maddening. I kept thinking I'm not even through with growing up, how am I going to raise someone the proper way? Anyway the father, a faceless character, tried to keep me calm but I was going into labor and what the fuck I can't have this child I'll mess it up I can't I can't I can't not now wait a second wait please wait

and then I wake up

In the dream, that is. I wake up and it was a school day and I was sixteen again. And I went to school all disturbed about having dreamt about being pregnant and I rush into class and I find my friend Tommy, and ask him "Okay, so, if you dream about birds it means you'll get pregnant, right? But if you dream about being pregnant that kind of guarantees that you won't get pregnant, right?" and Tommy goes "Well, maybe you'll get pregnant with birds." and I go "WELL SHUT UP TOMMY SHUT UP".

I was obviously a bit high-strung at the time.

Maybe I'm going to have to explain the bird thing. It's just one of the many stupid beliefs rural Paraguay holds; a girl who worked at my family's estancia once told me, when I was a kid, that if I ever opened an umbrella indoors, then my mom would die. Yeah. That kind of thing. Anyways, I kept mulling the bird thing in my head until someone just barged into my classroom, a tall man all dressed in black, with no face, and led the few of us still inside the room out. The tall man with no face put his hand on my neck as we were walking out and it felt dominant and comfortable and nice.

Outside the weather was apocalyptic: dusty and foggy and sunny at the same time. As if something had just blown up. We kept walking and faceless man disappeared and so did everybody else. Suddenly I was certain this was part of a conspiracy of SOMETHING SOMEWHERE and I was terrified and marveled and had trouble breathing through the heavy hot air.

As I walked around a corner of my old school everything became gray and rainy, and people started walking around again as if nothing were wrong, and nothing was wrong.

I wasn't pregnant, the world wasn't going to end. The faceless man disappeared and I already forgot about his hand intent on my neck.
There are no birds.

My tongue is made of cotton and my joints creak and my skin is too hot and the air is made of sand.

My hair is too tight. My eyes sting.

I kept bumping into people, hitting them with my shoulders in hopes of starting a fight, of starting something, of having something happen, anything.

Today I woke up and I had this lingering feeling of anti-climax. Something needs to happen, something needs to break. I keep reading articles about obscure doomsday cults and guerrilla warfare and coups d'état. I want to push people walking on the street against walls. And I'm not angry, I'm not upset, I just want something loud to happen. I want to go medically insane and hit my fists against padded walls until they're bloody. I want to scream until I lose my voice. I want to find someone I lost.

or maybe for someone to drop me in the middle of the ocean so the cold water on my hot skin makes me swim swim swim swim swim away