I had a dream in which all of the tall, skinny letters of the alphabet–the ts and ls–attacked and ate the small, squat letters. Most of the vowels were eaten, although the u managed to escape with the help of a sympathetic letter g. With the a burbling there in the t‘s gullet, and two halves of the w, split like a wishbone, jutting out of the abdomens of the b and the k, an entirely new alphabet was formed. Unpronounceable. Carnivorous. Rabid. Cannibalistic. The surviving letters eventually became hungry again and turned on each other.

A dream, yes, but also a metaphor for what is going on in my head. A constant battle to find something relevant to utter. Grasping for a connection to the world, my own inner language nonsensical and meaningless. It is so easy for me to fold inward, just turn off my thoughts and lose myself in daily tasks and busy work. I am my father’s son, after all–my father, who has been napping on the couch more or less for 30 years.