[a dream as what was]

6:33 a.m.:—phosphenes, a shuddering door, a dream as what was, as who had been, next to who is both here and still there, the shape of a kitten cutting a hole in an unlit room, steps across unseen womb sliding in slippers between bed and walls, the angular word eigengrau for what hue the eye can see in light’s complete negation, switch turned on revealing dead moth caught in sheet-web between bathroom window and screen, eastern screech-owl on power line disappearing after four hoots, two Carolina wrens sensing absence begin in blotting blue, dull scratch of jet engines, three in one minute; old truck engine in condominium carved into the hillside, motorcycle announcing the distance from a kitchen to Interstate 85, school bus on street’s apex turning right and further upward, more jets in southeast trajectory, another or one of the same wrens, more distant now, a different call, a webpage on phosphenes laying out causes matching symptoms of capitalism, small gray squirrel crawling across darker gray deck, small cat scurrying towards the sound of sudden feet in the back of the house, sound of water from bathroom sink competing with freight train two blocks away, silence between 8:12 and 8:13 a.m. broken by northern cardinal male on chain link fence, continued on neighbor’s wooden fence two feet away, the sound of feet and creaking hardwood, another jet, half empty mug of tepid tea with too much milk, someone asking “but what’s the opposite of eigengrau?” while making coffee—