Remembered Sleeps
by Dan Berick
I.
I am four, or perhaps five. It is early evening, and I am in my little bed in my (first) childhood bedroom. There’s a family party downstairs. I have the flu, and have been fever-sleeping all day. I rub my eyes and see my grandfather sitting in my kid-sized chair, reading a book. He was a small, quiet, scholarly man, with thin grey hair and glasses. In my memory, he always wore a dark business suit and black, cap-toe oxford shoes, perfectly shined. He wore a pocket watch on a chain. He didn’t like parties. I blink dozily at him, and he smiles at me.
II.
I am seven, or perhaps eight. Already, falling asleep is a challenge: every night, when I turn out my bedside reading light, my mind fizzles and bubbles in the dark. I have come to realize that my last conscious awareness at night is the imaginary sensation that my bed is spinning on its horizontal axis. Not rapidly, or frighteningly, but slowly, soothingly. Lately I have begun trying to hasten sleep by anticipating the sensation: I tell myself that I can feel the bed starting to spin, steadily, gently, inexorably. Inviting sleep to come.
III.
I am ten, or perhaps eleven. It is the first appearance of a dream that still recurs, although, of late, at decreasing intervals. In this dream, I am looking down from a balcony into a room made featureless by drapery and dim lighting. I see myself lying on a bed, with only my shoulders and head exposed. Next to the bed is a display case containing a model of a forearm and closed hand, and a plaque that bears an inscription. I cannot read it from my vantage point. There is not a single movement, no sound. I know that I am viewing my dead self.
IV.
I am thirteen, or perhaps fourteen. I am in my (second) childhood bedroom, which had butterscotch houndstooth wallpaper and chocolate-brown shag carpeting. I sleep on the bottom tier of a bunk bed, acquired in anticipation of friends and slumber parties that were never to materialize. The AM/FM flip-clock radio softly clicks off the minutes. It is very late on a school night. I tell myself I can feel the bed begin to spin. The radio is on, the volume low. “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” is playing. I am not dreaming.
BIO: Dan Berick is a writer based in Cleveland Ohio, a husband, father, and lawyer, and a graduate of Columbia University and The University of Chicago. His recent work has appeared in Gulf Stream Magazine, The Storms, The Interpreter’s House, One ART, Epistemic Literary, The Pierian, Stone Poetry Quarterly, The Rivanna Review, FULL HOUSE Literary, 34th Parallel Magazine, Citywide Lunch and Cerasus Poetry Magazine, and is forthcoming in Santa Barbara Literary Journal.