Night Light

In my dream, I’m looking out over our tiny backyard and—although it’s nighttime and this window looks north—through the trees I see something bright like the sun, but rising too fast. An explosion, perhaps . . . or a spaceship, apparently, since one of its drones is now floating over the flowerbeds, leaving a girl behind as some sort of emissary, and I think, in my dream, if only there were time to reboot my computer, maybe together we could figure out which star she’s from, and isn’t it funny how, even in my dreams, I’m still shackled to my desktop.