I keep having this dream where a doctor tells me I’m going to die at thirty. Every time, I drive straight from the office to your house. We sit in the living room, overlooking a little field, and feel like we’re at the bottom of the ocean. I tell you how I didn’t weep in anguish when I learned my lungs would shrivel into chunks of coal, and I would choke on my own blood on my thirtieth birthday—didn’t think about skydiving or visiting Norway. Didn’t even compose a bucket list. I just thought to myself, “I know who I’m going to see after this.” You ask me to leave, really nicely, with tiny crystals beading in your eyes, so you can think about things for a while. Your response is cheerless, but it’s comfortable.
Then I wake up. I go on with life, and the dream feels like clouds spinning inside of me. I hope you know, things aren’t too bad these days—I sit on the left side of the Brown Line, so I can watch the Loop bloom like a valley of steel. I have lunch on Tuesdays with my dad and think about my mom. These are the things I cling to, like smoke between my fingers.
Brian Clancy is a creative writing major and peer writing tutor at DePaul University. He likes to write poetry and short fiction. His work will be published for the first time in The Orange Couch. In his free time he likes to write music and go for walks around Chicago.