William Doreski Toxic Metal Why did I dream of massive steel I-beams dumped in my driveway and arranged into runes legible only from an airplane? Also piles of lumber and a grumbling truckload of concrete ready to spill its guts. What manner of construction does this imply? Daylight catches me unawares. My arm doesn’t ache from yesterday’s tetanus shot. Does this mean that it didn’t take and I’m doomed to die miserably of lockjaw, my torso arcing with agony, my teeth crushed in my grimace, unable to beg for mercy? Do those steel girders imply that toxic metal lurks somewhere south of immediate attention? If I could read the runes scrawled by those I-beams maybe I’d learn the name and telephone number of my fate. And what of those piles of creosote-drenched lumber? The dream dissipates. Too late to solve the runic message I wrote myself, too late to pour that concrete over all the flaws in my thinking. I don’t really expect tetanus to dramatize my narrative but I shouldn’t rely on my dream life to tell me how and when to die.
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