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Dream Journal

The Landlord-Hidden Stairs

Our apartment has the same landlord, but is in a 5-10 story skyscraper in New York. There is a set of convenient stairs which the landlord has blocked off. I make my way through a public elevator to three rooftop garden mall, which the landlord also owns. On a path near the edge of the roof, I see strings of Christmas lights left unhung on the ground. I manage to sneak into my own hone by going down a disused private elevator behind the shucking station of a Chinese restaurant there. It’s a charming hand-hewn wood space that reminds me of a spice rack, and it looks like the old lady next door has one just like it. Perhaps that’s why he blocked it off, he couldn’t separate the two and couldn’t bring it up to code as a communal space.

A different dream possibly. On our outside stairway, the landlord has taken all the plants. He’s told my wife (who assures me he said he’ll bring them back) but I still complain that he gets to take them for an entire spring season.


I’m reading a book in class, might be reading on my phone. Walk from the front of the classroom to the back. A small cloud of vapor escapes the precession of students, but I’m not sure if it came from my mouth or the older black student in front of me. Girls practicing basketball in the gym, studying collisions by crashing their bodies mid-throw. I meet a childhood friend, Robby T., as an adult finally. I ask if he even goes by Robby anymore and tell him of my new name. He tells me he was taken out of school at some point. I walk away for a minute and my backpack’s missing. I find it quickly, intuiting that the Robby of now would hide it, as was a prank we might play on each other in school, but wouldn’t hide it far as that would be funnier for me to fail searching for it.

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