I dreamed I was in Kansas City and was back in school as a flute performance major. A poet and I were sharing a dorm room. It was great at first. I had the room done up like a little Hello Kitty store, full of the kinds of snacks and supplies we’d need, all presented vending-machine style. The poet was funny like he is. It was all good.

One evening, I went to a party in the library. All the conservatory students sneaked in after hours. It was getting late, and everyone was falling asleep in a tangled pile on some of the vinyl furniture we’d pulled together to make a giant sleeping pod. I decided to go back to the dorm room. When I got there, the poet started screaming at me, reconstructing the past in ways that didn’t reflect reality, accusing me of things I hadn’t done, and calling me sanist.

I left and went to a bedazzled cube suspended at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere. The cube rotated slowly on a horizontal axis, the moon coming in and out of view as it spun, like a restaurant called The Skies that’s no longer open in Kansas City.

There was a woman in the cube, my flute professor. She told me we could stay together if that’s what I wanted. I said it was.

Can I tell everyone, I asked.

I’d rather you not, she said. I want you to be my secret.

Secret. Othering. Erasure. Being hidden. The same old story, only this one suspended in time for all eternity.

That’s not what I want, I said as the cube started free-falling, heading toward Earth. This is the end of times, isn’t it, I said.

Yes, she replied, adding that I knew that on some level. You must have known.

Send me back to Earth, I said. I want to be with the planet and all living beings when the end comes, not here with you.

But here it will be painless. You will continue, she said. And there are humans there.

I know, and I am of them as they are of me, I replied. I belong with them, not you.

With this, John Lithgow appeared. He explained that, like the woman, he was God, who is distributed across everything but is also one thing. He would take me back to Earth because that was my wish.

As we floated down, he said, There’s going to be fire, heat. Stuff like that. Hot and not in a good way. Do you still want to go? The cube is very comfortable.

I still want to go.

Fine. Have it your way.

When we got to Earth, it was peaceful. It was beautiful. It was like I was seeing everything for the first time. Birds. Lizards. Water. Sand. No heat, no fire, no end of anything.

I went to my dorm room, and the poet sat up in his upper bunk. He said, Everyone is a draft of curses, before lying back down.

I woke up, recorded those words, then fell asleep and lucid-dreamed the whole dream again because I knew it contained important lessons my mind was working out.

After replaying the dream, a woman appeared in the dorm hallway. She was dressed like a Weeble Wobble and came over to me. I recognized her as me and me as her because each human is distributed across all bodies but is also one body.

She said, What I’ve brought to the new art is my name, known only by its syllables.

Day. Nuh. Day. Nuh. Or any syllables. Yours, for instance, dear reader. There’s no difference, not since that first name was recorded: Ku Shim. Ku Shim. Kushim. 𒆪𒋆

I woke up and called out to my husband. It was time to stop dreaming, though I could have gone on in that state all day. Such dreams are alluring, but they also call us back to the Earth and to all living beings.

My sleep score was a 90. I won’t lie. With that dream sequence, I was hoping for 100.