In the dream she forces her fist through the lid of the coffee cup. She picks up the dented plastic disc and laughs at the personification: CAUTION. I’M HOT! I’m real, she says. Not you! I don’t know her, or the cup, but I see her sometimes on the stoop of her house, swatted like an extinguished firefly. Yet that’s not her on the stoop; the firefly is just a firefly. But in the dream she tangoes with Ronald and twirls him so fast his makeup ejaculates, the painted semen indistinguishable from a strawberry shake. I drink these shakes as I walk home from work. I don’t like my job and I don’t really like McDonald’s. But it’s convenient and she’s there in the dream, with the cup, arguing about who’s real and who isn’t. I don’t hear existential discussions in my office. I barely listen to my co-workers. I examine the girls running by my window, hoping to see her face. I follow them to the stoop and wave if they notice me. They just swat the fireflies with the back of their hands. The girl, the woman, whoever she is, lives somewhere in this town. I just can’t find her. So for now, I visit one version of her at McDonald’s. Together we watch the prep cooks inject hallucinogens into the cheeseburgers, and I order two doubles and wait for her fist to exit the cup.

Christopher Linforth has recent work published in Hawaii Pacific Review, Gargoyle, Southern Humanities Review, and other magazines.