Back then, a few bodies ago, you knew how to get your dreams delivered. You would sleep in the shape of a question mark and the empty side of the bed would be the silent answer. Now the silence is broken by you answering the door late, groggy. Now dreams are strangers’ hands, with covered faces, leaving a parcel on the doorstep, untouched, which you find too late, with the doorbell’s ring muffled. You’re asking for more than you need. You lie that it’s broken and you’re reimbursed and keep these dreams. You lie to yourself: you don’t want them, you don’t know where to put them. Fragile, this way up, they are now half-used and tucked beneath your unmade bed. Now the dreamfulness wakes you up at odd hours of the night, with that shudder as if you’re dreaming that you’re falling or flying and then stop. Nothing is enough; the nothing is too much. You can’t say no to them, although you can’t say yes to them and follow them through; that would spoil these dreams. Besides, they’re not even yours. Kind of. Sleeping with outdoor clothes on has got you dreaming of the bubble wrap these dreams came in. You never finish bursting the bubbles; your room smells of plastic. In the next few sleeps, you want no more dreams, you want the sound of burst bubbles instead; not foam, but seconds of spindrift spittle. Throw it all out except the wrapping. A choking hazard. Only then can you wrap it all up, forget all the forgetting, stop feeling those dreams and that body as your own. Sleep on your back, straightened, correctly, staring at the ceiling. Sleep like a few bodies ago, some body on a commute, delivered, daydreaming of no longer dreaming, onwards, straight ahead, correctly. The bubbles don’t all burst.

Jorge López Llorente is a bilingual writer and translator from Madrid (Spain), who studied English Literature at the University of Oxford. His debut poetry collection, Los ojos desdibujados, is out with Cuadranta. His other poetry and fiction appeared in magazines like Under the Radar, New Critique, Wildfire Words, The Citron Review and -Algia, as well as on Spain’s National Radio (RNE).