in my dream, i’d been with a friend, speeding recklessly through the dark, empty state routes of the midwest, my unconscious drawing on more than a little personal experience. bobbing over a hill, we feel that moment of weightlessness, the whole reason you speed on dark midwestern roads, just as the red lights of a state trooper whip to life, a quick bleat of the siren. we pull over, the lights – their lights seem to get ever brighter, as they make the protective membrane of the car as brittle and transparent as possible – overwhelming us. we sit. we wait. we do not get out of the car. this is because, in my dream as in my real life, i have had a cop pull a gun on me when i got out of the car; i could hear the fear in his voice as he yelled, ‘do not get out of the car.’ you do not get out of the car – for you, maybe, or for them, but it is not what you do. so dream me sits, as the minutes tick by on the dash’s pale blue digital clock. five, seven, fourteen. no cars have passed. there is no sound. i get out of the car. there is none of the rush of color, the sick acid smell of nerves that i remember, no one coming to my door. nothing happens. i keep my hands visible. i keep everything visible. i walk, slowly, step by step, back to the police car. the engine hums, the lights smell hot, and the tall antenna bends slightly in the night wind. the doors are closed, the windows are up. the car is locked. no one is inside.