I was only joking. My arm wasn’t hurt at all.
The penny hadn’t come from high enough.
My friends and I laughed and laughed
imagining the panicked high schoolers
above us who were just then perhaps
feeling a little regret for throwing things
off the tower they were climbing.
But honestly, why do what they were supposed to?
Just stand in line until the top then look around
and point? That’s what the ads showed.
It looked like a giant waterslide without water.
Or a slide. Just a thing to pay money and do.
My brain knows I find it amusing
so works pretty constantly to please
and handing me this sentence
(which I’ve said out loud six times already)
right before my alarm went off two hours ago
was definitely a gift—a precious Monday morning gift—
not only does Fledermeyer rhyme with
Neidermeyer so that Animal House
hovers in my memory of the dream
(maybe that campus is where my friends
and I were walking to, instead of where I really work),
I realized on reflection that the lack of masks
and distancing were of no concern
to anyone, not even me (and I am
generally, dramatically, in real life, concerned),
so it must have been done, the whole thing,
finally, and we could walk with our friends,
and make dumb jokes, or leave the house
to climb a winding stairway, mushed together,
get bored in line and get in trouble,
the kind that isn’t about a disease.
marniere 