back to the western dustbowl town, the long covered walkways beside bustling shops and large plate glass windows. back to hacking cough when the wind picked up and the painful lack of trees that bore any green upon their naked branches. back to streets of pale tan, sandy brown, and the eddies that swirl up with every breeze on every corner. 

voices whisper in every little whirlpool if you have the ear to listen. no one does.

I watched her walk down the line of shops, the others just visible across the street. the town this time seemed like some large T shaped thing and across the way I could see the catti-corner saloon-turned-respectable-dining-establishment. she looked neither left nor right, pale blonde beauty that she was. her eyes snapped fire behind grey-tinted glasses, and i wondered what else they were hiding. it seemed a flock of younger men was following her, seeking approval or something else i have no idea nor concern. 

but when she left, handed up into a covered carriage, the matched blacks snorting and stamping like fire, i followed. I ran behind tirelessly, i flew on aching wings, i glided just above the road-

the farm was a green and growing square in the middle of the dustbowl flats. its windbreak was of high, tall, strong trees with deep roots and wide branches covered in spring growth. i watched from high above while the carriage meandered through their two mile square property. Something was going to happen.

she found me, standing in one of the bedrooms as she entered, pressing the door closed silently behind her. the conversation is now so much static, as we were interrupted by a man in straight trousers and a tan shirt. his dark hair looked like hawk wings, speckled with blonde from the sun and red lights shining in the depths. she was angry to see him, tried and failed to hide me. 
“Oh, it’s only Douglas,” she groused, and drew herself up to her full, admittedly rather short, height. “my husband’s brother.” 

that pronouncement seemed like some arrow in my heart, and then i realized that i was Dreaming. that this was no nightly dream, no movie playing out… I was at once Witness and a player in this little melodrama. In the time it took to make those realizations, the husband was home as well. what followed is also jumbled and static-

the husband accused the wife of indecent behavior, which she denied and douglas upheld. 

i seemed not to exist and to be a major player by turns, it was confusing and disorienting.

the world outside seemed to shift, the greens growing nearly black the browns turning grey and growing thick moss that strangled and snuffed the life from them- the crops withered the buildings fell to ruin- 

while they stood there are argued in the middle of a bedroom that was, also, falling apart at the seams. 

when i managed to get outside there was another woman in long wine dress and flowing black hair. she held a candle, lit at both ends, and was wailing some high-pitched dirge of a song that rose and fell with the wind. she paced the outer limits of their land, just within the break, and held the dripping candle aloft so the wax dripped from both ends as she walked. i watched the colors run, the flames dancing in the wind that would not die and did not blow out the flame- 

when and where she passed, the trees roots were exposed, the dirt eroded away by the wind, crumbling from them dry and lacking all nutrients. the dust stung my eyes and i blinked- 

when i opened them again, the farm looked nothing like it had. 

the barns were in ruins, the animals gone or bones in the dust, all that remained of the plants were dried out husks broken like shattered spines where they’d grown- but there, standing in the wreckage, was the woman and her husband, and her brother in law, still arguing. 

the woman in red was nowhere to be seen.

i left the Dream.