Dream language: Two who mirror can mirror each other, but when one moves behind the back of the other, the second loses their reflection and must recreate it from memory as vision. This is how we learn to worship the self as other when other always is and has been self.

Also from last night’s dreams: A retreat. Cloud decor giving way to wheat sculptures. A grotto. Hallways full of doors. My vision board torn down hastily as the retreat ended. A half-finished project detailing radio stations airing vulgarities that I wasn’t able to take with me. Retreat organizers grinding their words like spices as the life partner and I packed up. We’d overstayed our welcome. Cloud time was for us, not wheat time. They beamed at the incoming group while waving us away like flies. The landscape crew mumbled. They claimed they’d watered things they hadn’t watered. Nothing was real anyway. They’d seen it all before and would see it again. More incomers. More enameled hope, the ill-placed hope that keeps the nightmare alive. Our dog ran off. The organizers made us leave before we could find her.