Three of Many Possible Explanations

1

The dream came weeks after I visited The Beautiful Captive, a solo exhibition by an Alexandrian artist. In an installation exploring enactments of domesticity, two goldfish were meant to be floating mindlessly around a glass bowl but upon looking closely, I noticed one of them had stopped moving. When I inquired, I was told the fish had died unexpectedly that morning, and that the assistant curator was on her way to the gallery with a replacement. Can I make you some tea while the new fish gets here?

A red velvet curtain hung inches above a fireplace with a beige marble mantel, a vase carrying two birds of paradise crowning one side, emptiness the other.

In the hearth not fire, but a belly of glass.

At his talk that evening, the artist did mention Magritte, but did not say the looping goldfish were stand-ins for fire. I might have read that later, in the curatorial statement.

2

In an old photograph (Geneva, c. 1993?) not one but two bees are trapped in a glass cup turned upside down—how did my father manage that? It was a game we played after we ate, as the light packed its things. When I could no longer see their honey stripes, or my mother’s orange lips, I knew it was night.

3

diary excerpts [weeks preceding dream]

No noteworthy dreams.

No punctuation.

Notes for my obituary: Survived by dust. No cats. Green milk. She always unlocked the door with the wrong key first. Kept her skin on a hanger as she slept. She was two women. One bird of paradise. One ran out.

Not again—the dream of wearing glass gloves I can’t take off. Nails painted red. Like flame in ice.

Now I cannot clean the house.