black and white dreams by Bogdan Dragos

by the time she was done
rolling that
cigarette
it looked like a broken,
gnarly twig

regardless, she put it between
her lips,
lit a piece of nacho on fire
and used that to light the
cigarette

and then just watched
the nacho burn
until the flames reached
her fingers

“Do you remember when
dreams used
to have colors?” she asked

“Color?” he said, and
thought about it. “Yeah, it was back
in the days when I
was a kid and movies
were black and white.”

She watched him through
a veil of smoke
that she thickened by blowing
some more. “Wow, you’re, like,
old as fuck then.”

“Old enough to know
there were better times, dear.
Way better times. When dreams
had color and sound…”

“Listen,” she said, “is this
a rant on technology
and how
it fucks our minds an’ all that?”

“What? Not at all.
I mean, all that shit’s true,
but that’s not why
our dreams lack color and
sound.
It’s because we stopped
dreaming right. We did too much
living and
not enough dreaming. Our brains
forgot how it’s done.
In your case it started with running
away from home
and taking cheap drugs
from creepy old men,
and in my case… well, I became
a writer somewhere at
childhood’s end. And now here we are,
late at night in the
streets,
just an old writer and
his black-and-white
imaginary friend that he refers to
as muse. Is it any
wonder that dreams are
black and white
and mute?”

“And cold as fuck,” she added,
and stretched her
pale hand
motioning for him to
pass the bottle