Dear Wigleaf,

Greetings from The Jerkwater Correctional Facility in the center of your town. A finicky TV is mounted to the wall, a seatless toilet squats in the corner. The soul-sick and profane are desperately achingly bored and strung out on two rows of iron bunks, or slapping down cards at the brushed steel round tables with immovable stool appendages blossomed from the cement floor. The magistrate sometimes watches through the bullet-proof mirrored window. Sometimes there's yesterday's paper. Sometimes we hear muffled rain and thunder.

After cornflakes and coffee we watch PBS until Oprah, Word Girl squirreling in our brains, so maybe later in the day, or maybe weeks from now, some fuck says, "diversion" or "cumbersome" or "idolize," and it sweetens the air like Glade.

But what I wanted to say: I've been having this dream. When I drift off in the afternoon (no sleep at night, mind you, when the place is wilding). My faithful mutt, a schnauzer mix, curls up next to me on a leather couch like the one in the apartment you and I shared, the place across from the record store where we smoked out on the fire escape as the same forlorn teens trickled in to thumb the albums. My dog is so real in the dream I can smell his breath and I feel connected.

One day I'll have my own room and a TV again.

Tomorrow I'm out by the highway collecting trash. If you spot me, please don't honk.







- - -

Read JM's story, "Sleep."

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