I have a nightmare so bad I go to the Emergency Room.

At the hospital next to the tennis bubbles.

Where everyone’s nice.

Kind.

Offering water.

Extending gentleness.

But they can’t help.

No.  

They don’t know how.

So, they send me to an office in what looks like a normal house, on a normal street.

On a red-bricked street.

A cobblestone street, it’s called.

Yes.

And when I get there, I tell the therapist everything about my nightmare. I suggest I’ve drowned in a previous life. “A sunken cruise liner,” I say. “Or a diver whose tubes tangled somewhere off the coast of Majorca, or, like a fish who just couldn’t figure it out.”

To which you, my therapist, replies, “Perhaps.”

Then.

Somewhere in the hallway a dish falls from a cabinet but doesn’t break.

Which is somehow worse, you know?

One of the other therapist’s rice is ready to be eaten with salt.

I hear shaking.

A saltshaker.

It’s fine.

I say, “Admit if I survived a shipwreck that’d be incredible.”

“Yes,” you say. “Certainly.”

Which is the last calm thing that’s said before the room starts filling.  

And you scream.

And I scream.

And I tell you to hold on.

Then I put you on my back.

And swim us up to the skylight.

__

I break the window with my carabiner.

I drag you onto the roof.

Out into the pour.

From there we catch our breath.

We breathe.

And laugh, like: Woaahhhh.

Then you smile.

And I smile.

And then I begin.

To teach you.

__

First: I teach you how to make fire from the leaves of the cedar tree and the dried bramble.

Second: is how to filter water with only a t-shirt.

Soon.

You know how to shelter.

And just in time: as the culverts fill, and the drainpipes burst, and the spillways and hydro-dams run over and eventually give way to weeks and weeks of unending rain.

__

Our roof is high.

That’s good.

We have time. Others don’t.

To think and rationalize.

To plan.

So, we do plan.

Then put our plans into action.

Fishing new lives for ourselves; pulling out cocktail attire, televisions, hot plates, Gatorade coolers and new, beautiful wives from the once-world drift.

Yes.

We live like that.

That’s how we live now. With libraries and chunks of orchestra pit floating by. With hemlock as an option. With pine needles instead of Soft Scrub and card games that never really end.   

Yes.

We have our daily salute to the Mule deer who’ve found a way to survive and even love one another on the roof of the gas station down the way.

A hot little worm farm in the chimney.

Moon leftover from the night before.

And everything goes.

And everything returns.

And everything that returns sticks out from the tide and becomes a home for the red birds.

A launching pad for the red birds.

Poultry runways, we joke.

We barely know how to joke now.

It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that me, you, and the wives microwave popcorn and set out our lawn chairs. And every day when the church bells ring out from the steeple above the upwell, we watch the cardinals take off and then over: this cartoon-like reddening of the afternoon sky.

Yes.

Boundless bright flight.

Which we love.

And which our wives love.   

But love a little too much, which starts this whole mess where––to keep them on the roof with us—we restore some version of religion. Of sloppy Christianity. Clefted faith. As billboards pass, you say things like, “Thee are light,” and, “Send me, Oh Lord, somewhere nobody wants!” And I say nothing. Because I remember nothing. Nearly nothing. Only the Wikipedia page on sunken cruise liners. The New York Times recipes I saved but never prepped. The second set of Spiderman movies with a younger Goblin. Rodney King. Tony Hawk. Iraq. Fallujah. Oil clouds. I remember something about a soda machine…Something. And the soft parts of summer. Toweling off. Kissing in the itch-grass behind the fairgrounds. The lights! My gosh! The ones from the weather balloons that were the same lights from Alba’s basement and, well, that’s it.

That’s all I have inside me.

For now.

Those’re my memories.

“Anthony,” you say quietly, cautiously.

I try to slow. 

The way you showed me.

But I can’t.  

I cannot.

“Stop,” you say harder than a therapist should.

But that’s how you talk to me now, casually, truthfully, especially since I started bugging you to give me something smart to say when roof-church is in session. Something sage and easy to remember. Something that hopefully pertains to our specific situation. Yes. And you remind me to remind the wives of Genesis. Of the story where we are dogs. And the wives are dogs. But we’re all sort of not dogs too because we can’t smell and we’re not terribly friendly. Regardless, we’re together. And a flood comes like it has now, except we have no high roof in the story. No nothing. So, after learning about a great ship in a rather gossipy way, we make our way through the dark with the other dumb creatures. We go to where the torches are. And there’s scaffolding, felled trees, and men offering to save us if we get in line. And we do get in line because salvation is tempting. But when we get up to the bridge, we’re told by the ship maker’s son that we must wait off to the side. And there's some hemming. Some hawing. Some who decides? who honestly? The wives cry and beg for grace. For benediction. But, in the end we’re left off the Ark. Flat out. We’re abandoned. Which makes sense because we’re like dogs but worse. Still though it hurts. Then, soon, we’re drowning. Then floating dead. And I think the wives understand this story. I think they get what I’m saying: that they’re worse ways to spend life than out on the roof with a couple of fellas, you know?

“I know,” you say.

“Finally,” I say. “You admit it.”

“Quite a show you put on,” you yell, now running down the sidewalk behind me.

Your necktie flapping in the wind. 

“Quite a show this church puts on,” I say, stepping out between the afternoon carriages.