A dream came in through the window and perched near the edge of my desk one day, not saying anything. I didn’t notice it for a while, because it didn’t disturb my books, which sat full of angles, unaccommodating to one another. Papers moved from one side of the desk to the other, and back, and all the while the dream was quiet. Then it got bored and began to hum a low tune, and that’s when I realized it was there.
      I put down my pen. It kept humming.
      Finally I said, “That’s neither here nor there.”
      It hummed on.
      “I don’t have any place to put that.”
      It ignored me.
      “How did you come down so low? Why didn’t you stay with the others?” I said. “It’s better up there.”
      It hummed a little softer, and then a little higher. It was the color of butter.
      “I can’t do anything down here,” I said. “I’d make a mess of it. My hands—they tremble. My heart is too small and my mind is full of holes.”
      Its tune became lighter.
      I thought of the last one, which had sung as lightly, some time ago. It had made me laugh. It had tried to get me to sing, but I would bungle the sound. Then one day, floating in and out of the room while I sat at my desk, it tore itself on a nail in the wall and I turned to see the life go out of it. I went and held it as it sank to the floor and bled its dream-stuff all over my trembling hands.
      So I was afraid when I heard myself say, “But if you want—you can stay.”
      The bed I made for it was from a low crate that had once held a small harvest of clementines.
      During the day, while I sat at my desk, it would sometimes spread itself across the ceiling like a coat of paint. From there it would draw up my thoughts, so that each would begin somewhere in the seat of my wooden chair and rise up, in a lemon haze, into an unanswered question. The papers held still at my desk. The books jutted but did not complain.
      Sometimes we would go walking in the woods and across the frozen pond. Outside, in the snow-lit day, it would become transparent. I would not see it—it would simply fade into everything. I would listen to its humming, though sometimes I was not sure if this came from the dream, or if it was from me. Sometimes it would pretend to be afraid of something and hide behind my eyes, and then everything would take on that buttery hue; everything would seem soft to the touch.
      We stayed out later. In the falling light, it would deepen into gold and glow with a mineral intensity. I believed then that if I held it within me it would burn through me, breaking all my atoms apart. Its humming would be a roar through the twilight branches, startling the owls. I hated, and was relieved, to go home.
      And then one night it refused to come back in. That’s when I knew that I had lived to see the end. I took off my hat and looked at it for some time, while the cold bit at my ears. It hummed shyly. I closed the door.
      The fire was low; I kicked it up. I looked at my desk. I saw the motionless papers and the books, askew, and I thought, tomorrow—I will break their stiffened spines.

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