Good morning. So I turned in early last night, another long cold night of listening to silence broken only by an occasional door slam or a little dog barking. If I listened really hard through the raining bells of tinnitus, I could hear through the wall of my neighbors, the rhythm of their talking. Real communicating about who knows what, but at least it was speech and not the chaotic sounds of television.

I woke. I sat up and looked out the window into what seemed like an enormous spotlight:  the moon!  So big and bright, could bright light be enough to wake me?  I felt a little disoriented and thirsty so I drank. I was tempted to take a picture of her, but it was cold so I curled up in soft socks, sheets, and blankets, ready to take on the remainder of the night.

The dream felt familiar. I know this one. The one where we are all running for our lives because something is coming, only this time it was not Godzilla or a tornado. This time we were running from a bomb that North Korea launched at us.  Most of the dream was running, the kind that you know you’re not going fast enough, it’s going to be a close call–if at all– no time to look back and make sure we’re all still together, the building, the concrete block of structure that offered “shelter,” would it be enough, and would it be in time?  We made it inside. We ducked and covered.  We rode out the terror of the bomb, the explosion, the world-ending noise, the vibration of the walls now falling down on us. From inside my eyes I could see the tip of the missile, its trajectory, the dull brown grass that surrounded us, soon to be obliterated. But this is how you know it was a dream, because there was no heat. No smoke. And we survived.

We dug ourselves out and left the shelter to see what was left. And it was all desert grassland, horses and cows running wild, free from perimeters.  LBFTs, and the ground opened up to a swarm of insects. They were not locusts, more like metallic black beetles of all sizes. Then it began to rain. We were running through the rain focused on our footsteps in the shaggy grassland.