i had this dream the other night and in this dream things were very dark and out of control like i was driving out of this town i used to live in and you know how places in dreams aren’t really exactly like how they are in real life? and i couldn’t slow down the car, and the curves were wrong

and it was nighttime dark, but, like, not nighttime, and the trees on the side of the road were phwapping the side passenger side of the car as i rounded curves that were sweeping and yet sharper than the speed of the car would reasonably take, like, it *could* take them, but it was an unreasonable request, especially with how dark it was, because everything was dark, like nearly black, a charcoal grey, and things that i should be able to see were like outlines of ash against charcoal like when you’re grilling and things are really hot and dangerous and still have their shape but if something jostles the situation the coals will fall apart and the whole world was like that

until i got to the end of the road and instead of turning right like i usually would, there was more road on the other other side of the intersection and over there the moon was glowing this sort of it’s the middle of the night and you can do things pretty well because it’s bright under the moon brightness and the pavement ended, and the road became a sandy dirt sort of trackway through some farmland and there was this cool looking barn under the moonlight off to the left, and there were some men standing around the field like they were taking a short break from doing midnight moonlit farmwork and i hopped out and asked if i could take a picture of the barn under that cool midnight moonlight and the guy i asked pointed to the guy who owned the farm and i asked him and he was all, sounds okay, it is a cool looking barn under this light

and i pulled out my phone and just couldn’t get the photo lined up because no matter how far i stepped back or off a little bit to get a better angle the image on the phone’s camera was always really zoomed in and i just couldn’t get the angle right, and kept sidling a little further down the road, away from my car, and deeper into the farmland until i found myself inside a farmhouse with some other guys who were sitting around the kitchen table and it was one of those kinds of houses you sometimes encounter in dreams where there was an entire wall missing, and the rooms just sort of start off semi-merged with the yard, or in this case the road

and my younger son was there, littler than he should have been and it was pretty clear that he didn’t belong there and that, really, i didn’t either, and that maybe i wasn’t ever going to get that picture no matter how cool the barn looked under that midnight moonlight, and so i took his hand and we started out the house, and back down the sandy dirt track between the fields and toward the car, and about the time we passed by that barn again it started to get dark, like midnight charcoal dark, and things we should have been able to see were outlined in ashy and everything was fragile