21 october 2020- i dreamt i visited the mall with my good friend, seraphim. we were hitting up the outdoor pavillion, soaking in that heretic LA sunshine. taking a few hits here or there, laughing it up. plenty of people visit the mall during the summer, but we found some secluded spots here and there, passing the pen between us. on a whim, we enter the mall interior and start perusing some stores. near one of the big sliding doors, sera sees this cute little bookshop, with a fun industrial theme named Quill and Whisps. she tells me, with a big ass smile on her face, oh my gooood i love book stores, lets go inside! i'm like, did you read my mind??? that's what i was thinking!

so we go inside, and it's not too crowded for a bookstore, which is good. cute notebooks everywhere, interesting sci-fi novels on the shelves. we make our way to the back, giggling all the while. i don't even feel out of place when i notice we're the only non-1% chicks in the goddamn room. but then mall-sec comes in, beefed up and looking for a fight. got the standard kevlar cargo-vest bullshit on and one of these hired-guns slams a girls head into a shelf. her friends shriek, all beach-blonde sass and attitude. me and sera look at each other, suddenly coming down hard. the peakborn sister clan over there are smackin their shiny lips, but the mall-sec doesn't seem to care. we get the hell out of dodge when it's obvious a fight's gonna happen.

so we book it to the escalators right? three fucken flights down in this stark white tube, with advertisements placed like museum paintings. i keep messing up, taking the upward bound escalators so it takes us three times as long to get to the doors out of the hermetically sealed shopping block. finally, back outside in the semi-fresh air, the sun staring down like it knows what we've done. we run to her little blue hovercar parked all the way at the outskirts of the car lot, sleek chrome only three years old. pretty good condition. the doors slam as we dump our bodies into the soft suede and we burst out laughing. nothing's funny about everyday violence, nothing at all, but it is pretty hilarious when we both realize. sera doesn't know how to drive. she doesn't even have her license.

ahahah, h-howww'd you even get here? hahaha

shhhh don't worry about it shhh shhahahaha. i figured it out

that was before whatever was in the flavorpod...shit. we're still cruisin. we're still feelin it. okay. okay switch seats let me drive i have my license. move.

chill out babe i got this. don't be such a worrywart. who are you, me?

so i let her start the ignition and we tear out of the scene, just another cog in the well tuned machinery that is californian traffic. the air-con is blasting cool air, and sera's always got the best taste in music. we vibe until her jank ass driving nearly causes an accident, and that's when we notice we don't know where we're headed. no problem, sir, i'm in the passenger seat, cross legged and phone in hand. are you feelin like getting some munchies cause im feeling like getting some munchies. here, take the next right, i know this sushi place just down pescadero. we make it there no problem. sure, we're swerving a little but it's an angel's day off. fuck 'em.

no problem, until we have to park. the sushi place's parking lot is tiny as shit and full. i'm so used to hovercar parking, with the anti-grav shutting off in lot tracks, that i'm in my head until sera says, fuck. we have to park curbside. can you do it for me? i JUST figured out how to drive this thing. we switch seats, thankful the street the sushi place is on is a residential. otherwise, we'd have to hear more cusses coming from the car intercom from the disgruntled drivers behind us. god, i wish we could turn those off. but god doesn't hear me cause it's her day off too. i get in her seat, push the seat back, adjust the mirrors, and wipe my grubby hands on my binder. i got this.

i don't got this. at first it looked good, real promising, real legendary shit. then i hit the curb, and accidentally step on the gas instead of the break, and bump into the car behind us. the chassis of the car jostles, but sera doesn't even look fazed. she must have hit way more than i did. good thing hovercars don't dent anymore. we finally manage to park in a shady spot, underneath a magnolia tree. all that work for nothing, cause the line for the sushistop is longer than my-

anyways.

back on the freeways. sera's swiping through reviews on the hovercar's control panel now, trying to find anything that has a line shorter than an hour. but i know nothing on the system's going to be open. i tell her i know a place, but we have to go off grid for it. she says that's fine cause Musi-ca has an offgrid feature anyways. good. i pull the car out of the 75, switch onto the 10-12, and pull out of a tunnel lit only by cheap, old fluorescents. the town we drive through is filled with apartments and houses, all shorter than four stories. we drive past emptied pools and bikes on yards. the plaza we pull into is so old it doesn't have anti-grav tracks, but it's a gridlot and i can work with those.

we step out of the cars, bodies loose and light like the day we got them. the dim-sum place, it's so old it doesn't even have neon signage. that's how you know it's good. gross beige stucco with these church-style shingles? even better. i click on the lock, the car beeps, we walk to the store. god, it's so quaint. the door jingles when sera opens it. the store is blissfully empty. we pull out the barstools at the counter, and punch in our orders. sera's on her phone, doing god knows what, while i flop face-down on the slightly-sticky wooden counter, taking a well-earned catnap. she taps me awake when the food pushes out from the conveyor belt and we dig in.

oh shit.

fuck, sorry. i'll slurp with less force. here, let me-i dab the sauce from her blouse. i haven't stopped carrying bleachpens with me in my brushkit, habit of old days in school. finishing the food and yawning, we look at each other, feeling sated and ready to head home.

8 march 2018- ok so my dream starts off with me near windhelm?
like that part of the mountain across from the windhelm pier and im just like going up?? but facing south which is like the opposite of how it works in game and so im going that way and like for some reason someone compels me to go south?? (north in game)
and this mysterious fairy lady is like if you go south you'll find lots of treasure and become strong and so i'm like okay im gay lets go
and so it just gradually gets greener and stuff and i encounter weird armor enemies kind of like stuff witnesstheabsurd draws and i defeat them despite being low level??
(in my dream i'm playing as my new build tenvi remember her probs not lmao) and i cross this bridge and honestly i feel like i'm in a zelda game at this point all green landscapes n old architecture and i get to this like palace,
not like a castle but like it's two stories and very greco-middle eastern?? Idk and theres a shore that's just covered in these hollow crystals and gems,
and theyre supposed to be soul gems and the fairy lady tells me to eat them and i do and they're crunchy and then i go in and basically ransack the place for their crunchy gems
after that i stop playing and i'm doing some irl stuff but the fairy is still following me and in real life i join some nonprofit to end gang violence???
yeah idk and it ends up w me in a parking lot that looks more like a laser tag arena with a bunch of kids w guns starting a dance off before the police arrive and my family takes me home
but i live in like a penthouse now??? wtf right but it was baller but me & my sis still share rooms which is bullshit
and then me and can end up helping al pick a christmas??? formal outfit and i didnt have the heart to tell her it was all ugly as hell
and then i woke up also for some reason we were using my sisters closet for alice's stuff but like my sis came home w her bf in tow but she was cool w it the end

20 november 2020 - this dream was filled with light. it took on the shape of the ocean. i awoke in this space alone, with a new body, on the cleanest beach at the end of the world. it could have been any of the beaches i knew, somewhere sunny and filled with tanned bodies of all shapes and sizes.
i was riding my bike alongside the clear quartz sand, looking for a good spot to set up. the wind soared past my limbs, and it felt like a freedom i can't fathom awake. smooth wheels on smoother concrete, the tangle of my hair buoyant in the air. the glowing silhouettes of palm trees in the distance seemd to beckon me further along, like hands reaching up towards the endless sky.
i skidded to a stop by a bustling pier. when i stepped foot into the sand, it felt like a homecoming. the most microscopic salt of the earth, all gathered in one place. even if you could walk on clouds, you wouldn't want to anymore after dipping your feet in this stuff. i ran, with wild abandon, as a long limbed creature set loose after forever in a cage. belongings had no value in this space, i knew i could always return to where i began. flinging my body into the waters, i felt sleek. i cut the water apart with my limbs, feeling the break of hydrogen bonds like bubbles popping softly. kicking and curling and floating in this unfamilar bath, my form was changed just as i changed the waters.
when i emerged, all i knew was the setting sun, the other beings delighting in their newness beside me, and the urge to dry off. even in my dream beaches though, there are lines to the bathroom. of course. but in this space, even the little annoyances of the waking world are sublime in their meaning. i found myself a free open air shower to wash the particles off me, enjoying the water and air surging onto me, enjoying even the sounds of nearby volleyball players and family gatherings.
when i went back to my bike, and started to lay my towel down in the last of the sun's rays, something stopped me. the touch of a hand to my shoulders, a voice in my ear telling me in no uncertain terms, that the high tide would come in that moment, flooding all the impurities of existence away. no one will be hurt, they said, but you ought to go now. holding my bike by the handlebars, walking side by side with this voice, we stepped onto concrete as soon as the tides came.

together, we stepped onto abandoned coastal highways, through deserted streets, seeing only my reflection in the darkened storefronts. during the day, we found ourselves hidden from the world in plain sight, stitched into the greenery of lady's fingers growing on cliffs or in the barnacles attached to wooden growths. at night, we separated to walk the earth, seeing clearly in the moonlight as we found our way home. sometimes i pedalled through air, carrying the both of us in me as i pulled the moonlight into my limbs, a pathway only we could see.
moving farther inland, i could see my reflection growing, see the mass of you i carried with me in the way my fat redistributed, the way my walk changed, the embodied proof of another life growing in me. hair sprouting where it finally belonged. bone structure changing. the new curve i held in my throat a sign, pregnant with my own potential. you carried me in your gut until i sprouted at last. and we were finally home.

5 december 2020 -cupping the glass jar with both hands,
i siphoned the heat from the flame inside.
peering in, i could see the bright glow of the
lit wick amidst a sea of dark, molten wax.
barely making out my own reflection within, i concentrated on the fire.

the flame dances around, stripping more and more of the wooden wick as it crackles in response to my feelings. i channel everything i felt about you inside, all the good and the bad. every moment i could recall, from the passionate dance we shared at sunset to the tenderness of our bedroom at dawn. the petty arguments and the kisses, the way your bared shoulders tasted like sea salt when we made love as well as the bitter pit of anger in my ribs when we fought. the color of your eyes, the texture of your skin, the harmonies of your voice. the fire blossoms and expands until it reaches the edge of the jar. the heat sears my skin, but i do not stop. not until i give all of you over.

at last, i close the lid. orange heat gives way to blue flickering and finally, ashen cold. the clean white smoke of memory swirls in the jar, creating arabesque patterns until all that's left is the soot on the sides of the jar.

then, i wrap it and label it. for sale: one romance, duration: one year. complete experience, no scenes left out. hot and heavy, perfect for the holiday season. scented soy wax and wood wick.

you can make anything into a business these days.