i woke up at 3am this morning,
not for any reason,
not because i wanted to,
but when i tried to go back to sleep,
the crows started barking,
and my cat started chirping,
and a neighbor’s dog started mooing,
so i thought, well, maybe i didn’t really
wake up at all,
but damn does it feel like it later in the day
in my dream,
the police officer keeps asking about my papers,
and i’m thinking that he’s talking about documents that prove that i am who i say i am,
like ssn and driver’s license and deed to my house or something,
but instead i find out the officer,
who looks like a matrix character,
is talking about documents that somehow prove i know how to brew coffee,
and then somehow that segues to me in front of the world aeropress championship,
naked,
alone,
realizing that i have never brewed coffee in an aeropress before,
so i lose
and then i’m arrested,
and then i rot in jail for the rest of my dream life,
and then i wake up
the world rarely looks the way its
dreamt to be
but it’s nice to pretend
and smile and wake up to nothing
Fred Aiken Writing 