My old friends only visit me in dreams when I sleep inside this rusty old bucket of a trailer that smells like fried fish, old boots, and stale patchouli. I can’t sell because there is no one out here, and can’t move because one axle is cracked and the other frozen with rust. When I sleep outside my friends must be afraid of the coyotes, or the vicious badgers that come sniffing around looking for treats I bury in shallow graves hundreds of feet away from my bag. Mostly it works and the beasts stay away, satisfied with the gifts. It’s purely transactional, but I get to sleep under the stars in peace. When I saw her for the last time, N. Davidovitch called me, with no small bit of condolence, a refugee. I humbly disagree. I’m not a refugee, in fact I may be an anti-refugee, the one who remains while everyone else renounces, evacuates, evaporates. I’m the fortunate one who found a place that survived, if you define fortune loosely.

     But on cold or wet nights I retreat to my aluminum can and wait for the uninvited visitations of my old comrades, come from the places where they died, or at least disappeared; Council Bluffs, East St. Louis, Tallahassee, Rapid City, Cairo, Dac To, Matamoros. Some friends wanted me to follow while others hid, both motivations legit. Now when they visit in my dreams they only want to talk about one thing, my love of a woman named of Cleopatra, a name I knew was a fiction, but used anyway without hesitation or embarrassment. They speculate whether she has joined them in the next world or still wanders this one.

     Tonight my oldest friend Samaria arrives first and tells me she’s dreamed about Cleo again. I say, “Cut the crap, you’re a dead person dreaming inside my dream about a person who was barely real,” but Sammy disagrees and says she was real enough. She remembers her differently than I. In fact, every dreamt friend describes a different woman. She says Cleo had long light brown hair and grayish eyes that glowed like a possum in the dark. Marcus, always the darkest, insists she was a bleached blond with pigeon toes, crooked teeth, and pouty lips, and Eva, who was the first one to disappear, recalls a dark french braid tossed over her shoulder tied off with leather and a lucky rabbit’s foot. They argue about her eyes, her walk, whether she was clumsy or graceful. Sadie says she had a scar under her left eye from a bar brawl but N. Davidovitch, Sadie’s girlfriend, scoffs and denies the scar, but says Cleo’s nose was crooked as a result of that same fight. 

     I accept it all because there is no sense in denying memories, much less dreams, let them flow, I say, let them fill my empty bowl. But I dread the bickering. None of these recollections are compatible with mine. In fact, I no longer have a crisp sense of what Cleo looked like and these dream memories are no help at all. I tell my old friends I only recall how she smelled, and on this they trust me. Her neck was licorice and lime, her hands and arms gunpowder and dry oak leaves. The rest of her sometimes cumin, sometimes pepper, occasionally papaya, mildew, or spoiled milk. Sammie, always teasing, asks if I’m sure this was just one person, asks if I’m sure I really loved her, but the others scold and say, “Let her have her own memories you bastard! Let her keep what’s hers!”  

     Every night inside the trailer is a variation on a theme. My friends are dead, but they still dream, and they dream about a woman we all understood was a chimera, a will-o’-the-wisp, but when she touched me the earth ceased to spin and when she disappeared the world went up in flames. And this all happens inside my own dream which is no less than what I deserve, hiding out in this empty prairie in the center of a nation that is sometimes freezer, sometimes furnace, but always a fiction. In the mornings I walk outside and detect other odors. Sage, is that her? Pinon pine, is that her? Sun-baked clay, is that her? Fox scat, is that her? The ash of a burning planet, is that her? Is that her?