A Person Is A Universe (2026)

The sun knocks on my door.

I let him in; he was caught in a downpour like in a Brontë novel.

He sinks into my couch cushions pretty deep. I mention that neither of us ever wants to start a conversation in each other's presence. The candor catches him off guard, so I say nothing more.

That's not true. I need to bring up something to fill the silence, usually Cosmos or another biographical text. The sun goes on about how much of a god Sagan was, and I go blind staring at him.

I bring up my theory that a body can orbit a sun after it goes out. The sun looks at me like I'm very far away. I then abandon years of tact to admit that I'd do anything for him, like Cillian Murphy in that astronaut movie. He goes out, and I feel a firm yank.

In other dreams, my painter friend dies, and I inherit the estate. There's a piece they painted that I know would alter how millions of people understand themselves.

It's so simple; I'm angry I didn't think of it first. The piece condenses the human condition into sixteen by twenty inches, and then it entices the viewer into a three-step process to repair it. Rhetoric? Barely know him.

Cut to their lawyer's office: in their will, my friend explicitly states that I can't share any of their private work with the world. I fight with the lawyer, and it goes nowhere. How I resent them for trusting me.

Last week, I tossed my Prazosin. I miss dreams like these. Sometimes I think they're what's left of him.

These days in my dreams, I'm back in college Art during finals week. We're in a big gym, and the instructor has lain objects we own in front of us; these will be the medium. My things aren't mine, though.

Last dream, it was a mandolin, a flannel, and some cobalt gouache.

I try to play the mandolin, but my fingers don't work in my dreams. The flannel is too small. I tie it round my waist, but it barely grips on. Panicking, with my heart misfiring in my real and dream bodies, I pull ahead with seconds left on the clock like it's Master Chef, spitting straight into the gouache and painting on the sticky gym walls with my bare hands.

"What is that?" My instructor assesses with her eyes squinted.

"Everything."

She cocks her head to the side.

"That's just a couple people."

I fail the exam. Later in Philosophy review lecture, my friend Naftali is unscrambling some of my Math work, and I am editing his grad paper. He is the TA.

"Are you okay? Your lip is twitching again."

"I painted Everything."

"There is no such thing." He smiles.

I'm at a museum. Tali's art is on the wall, and he drew Everything. I feel obsolete. He never even told me he could draw.

My instructor is there, grinning with razor teeth and pointing with a witch's claw.

I'm back on Prazosin.