I rested awhile in the dream as in a small pond, tobacco-colored water the gift of old leaves. The sense of immersion and that color that golden brown. The certainty and weight of it, unthinkable forgetting. The obviousness of it. The rightness. How skinned I am with it and how at home in my skin.

A place of abrasion, the friction of roughness rubbing. Concrete under the drag of the worm.

Pop is there, in some body, I don't know what. Asking something of me, or telling something but I don't know what. He is there, close by. We are not one. There is a gap between us.