Summer Solstice 2026

Awaken, child, for I know thee. I know your heart and the fears it harbors and the hopes it dares not name.

Summer Solstice was yesterday, and with so little night, so little dark, my subconscious wreaked havoc. Dreams on dreams, layers of dreams. Not fun dreams, surreal and whimsical adventures in which the boundaries and physics of life are drawn out to their elastic limit. Not even nightmares. It was as if my mind handed me all my fears on a silver platter. One night only. Tonight's chef's special.

While, now, hours after waking, I cannot recall every little bit, I will disclose the few I do remember, for they weigh heavy on me, like a recovered repressed memory that really would have been better to stay put in the trenches.

Like I am in the audience of a comedy show with some guy. Who is he? Random dream guy. As often is the case, a placeholder for any guy. For whatever reason, I am lying on my belly, and someone points out that I am bleeding through my pants. There is blood on my ass. So, of course, I go to the bathroom, which has a steeply sloped floor and weird automatic soap dispensers that are broken. Of course they are broken, and plastic tubes, like life support, are spurting slick soap onto the floor—heavily fragranced, chemical-sludged, colored goo. And I struggle to get to the bottom of the slope where the toilet resides. I struggle to get back to the top of the sloped floor, back to the door.

Sweet child, you have hidden from your own blood as though I had not woven it into you.

I return to my seat, which has now appeared (good and gracious Lord, thank you. I no longer lie on the floor on my belly; I sit in a chair!). But every male in the audience is in some state of undress. Some fully naked, tiny little micro dicks, shaved and on display, big fat guts hanging over swollen, red, angry testicles. Some are in boxers or briefs or undershirts. My male companion—the Any Guy U.S.A.—is in a wife-beater and boxers, just like my husband wears to bed.

I ask him what is up. And the only response was that the comedian on stage said it would be funny for all the guys to get naked, and it wouldn't be weird if they all did.

Beloved, how strange that you should stand clothed among the naked and still believe yourself exposed.

Next dream: I am standing in a pool that only comes to my waist, yet everyone else is under the water, swimming beneath the surface, close to me. Close to my legs, as if they are sneaking a peek. I think they are all men, but I'm unsure. At least all the bodies I can see swimming under the water are male and buff. Like bodybuilder buff, swimming so close to me. And all I can think about is my pubic hair probably peeking out the edge of my swimsuit, and that they are probably only under the water to gawk at the shame of what had naturally grown out of my body. The cursedness of womanhood that sprouted when I quit being just a little girl.

Daughter, you have mistaken becoming visible for becoming unsafe.

For some reason, my husband (not indescript Any Guy, my actual current husband) and I are staying with my friend Kim. And for some reason, he needs to get up before me, so he has requested that Kim wake him up, even though I am sleeping next to him. So she tiptoes into the room and wakes him up, and I just lie there, silent and still, but also awake and aware. And jealous and outraged and hurt. He has picked her over me. They tiptoe out of the room, and I spend much of the dream searching for them. I find her, and she says it's nothing, he just needed to be woken up. But I could have done it! Why, oh why, did he ask her?

Precious, every door you feared would close behind you has always opened toward me.

Naturally, with dream logic, we leap to the next scene, in which I am moving in for a year with a couple because this has led to my husband and me taking a year-long break from living together (this is what happens when you have someone other than your wife or your alarm clock wake you up). Naturally, my husband is helping me move in. Did I mention the woman of the couple is pregnant? Not a little pregnant—hugely pregnant, might pop out a kid any moment.

My husband and her husband are trying to unpack my stuff, but she and I are trying to stop them. You can't just throw my stuff in with theirs! We need a system. We need organization. She and I plead with the men. Get some decorum! For we both know I will move out in a year, so even as we are moving in, we are planning the moving out. We need to have a system in place to distinguish whose stuff is whose, to make it easier when, in 365 days, everything we are doing right now falls apart.

Rest now, little soul. I have watched you bleed, hide, compare, divide your home, and prepare your leaving before your arriving. Sleep. Even morning arrives without rehearsing itself.