Obit- The Dreamland

by Alex McCullough

After Victoria Chang

The Dreamland—died on June 26th, 2016. It hasn't been so long. Every night I wake at an ancient hour and walk around inside my skull. It is not the same skull I carry during the day, but a replica with broken parts. The bellied walls retch and splinter at the crown; marrow runs up the temples like a burst pipe. Believing I've found a corner, I bark into the black, a warning or a fear response, and its echo confesses: even a not-skull cannot have corners, not really. And in this cornerless bone forever, I try to remember the house I watched grow dim every night, back when the dimming of sunlight was still a beautiful, valueless thing. I turn and fall through the floor of my not-jaw. I knock loose a few teeth in the process. They are not my teeth, but my years. Alone in my room, I sit with them until daybreak. A pearl of rot blooms at the root of fourteen as it turns to grain. I will stay twenty-one a bit longer. To cover the difference.