Peripheral Dream Sequence I have a dream in which my father is the villain. No, wait, let me start over. I have a dream in which I am the villain but my father made me, which makes him the villain too. The dream is like a car crash in my peripheral vision, a sequence of grinding metal and rubber and flame when he asks me, in a fury, are these your drugs? and I laugh because the drug in question is my own hot blood, viscous and unforgiving on my hands. My mother storms into my childhood bedroom; she tells me my father isn’t real. Not that he doesn’t exist, but that he’s trying not to. He’s trying to escape his own mess. He’s trying to escape the drug of settling for less, so easily swallowed in your youth which is also my youth which is also this dream sequence in which my father is the villain but I am too and so is my mother because despite the doped-up rush of licking our wounds over the years, we can’t help but make
Flying Island is the Online Literary Journal of the Indiana Writers Center, accepting submissions from Midwest residents and those with significant ties to the Midwest.