I can only distinguish the months by the he that he has become. Now, he is an actor who plays a bartender at night and has replaced the mid-town businessman who reminded me of my father.
It is 4am I am sound asleep dreaming of personalities that take form in other bodies. In front of me there is a young girl that looks like a child I taught how to ski in Colorado, but she is not her- she is my mother and I am telling her how much I fear losing my hair but she can't hear me over the television show my brother (who looks nothing like himself) is watching – she keeps asking me to repeat myself and I keep forgetting what I've said and say something different though I know its not what I've said before nor what I want to convey.
At the same time he is in a poorly light bar with blue plastic chairs that swivel and large wooden statues hanging on the wall as if on a pirate ship or the insides of a miniature golf course at the New Jersey shore. He is touching girls' arms, asking them to repeat their drink order – everything is getting darker and darker.
In the middle of a dream, my roommate gets up to go to the bathroom. I know this because my mind has switched and I am now in the basement of a ship. It is old and sterile, everything is metal and I'm having trouble locating the stairs that will bring me up to the top deck. I find a man who is sitting in a corner looking at his hands. I tell him about all the times I've tried to deny I had a body but he isn't following and I begin to feel the ship is sinking.
In the morning around 8am, all of this reverses. He is now at home in the basement of a two family house, one that shuts out the sun and smells of urine. He is rolling, falling under the blankets to avoid the light that I am walking through on the way to the subway. For days it goes on like this – both of us in and out of different conciseness's, different frequencies – two days existing as polar opposites, forming a negative when placed against each other; his white body against my dark sky; my dark hands falling though his white buildings.
I enter the subway tunnel, no more together then I was above ground. The train comes and I try to figure out how to contort my body to fit into this vassal. I imagine unscrewing my limbs, holding them as carry on luggage and venture though the closing doors just before my hair gets caught.
When I emerge on the other side of the tunnel, he flips over – realizes the opening in the blacked out window that sends a streak of light across his eyes. He swings an arm to fix the cut in the curtain and I disappear.
