ANOSOGNOSIA by Z.H. Gill

An ecosystem of dreams, my sister called her visions; I had them, too, but none of her confidence; the whole family could slip into dream, even in a waking state; one time Mom told me the Russian River required an oil change; one time Dad told me Mom was growing a peanut tree from his belly button, nursing it with promises of a transplantation to the garden out front; my sister went off to school to follow her dreams; I stayed behind, in part to help ensure Mom and Dad didn’t die; in part because I could hardly talk to anybody other than them; I was often alone; my thoughts came alive; I drew on the basement walls; I slept there most nights, it was becoming my room; my pictures of crashing ocean waves carved from capillary and vein, is the best I can describe; but one day you should come over, come see for yourself;  I shoplifted acrylics from the Hobby Lobby; Dad was gone for weeks before he saw what I’d done; after he saw the walls, he said it should have been me they sent off to school, that my sister hardly even called anymore; Mom said she saw her on the cover of OK! Magazine; really, she’d mistaken her for Jessica Chastain, who looked nothing like my sister—my sister’s hair had gone gray prematurely, for one thing; my sister called me often but each time she told me not to tell them that she did; in school she’d been building a machine (so she said) to make copies of her dreams; I didn’t believe her; I hardly believed anything she’d ever said in her life; but one day in the mail a package packed hastily arrived for me; within it I found a thermos full of the blackest gunk destined for the Russian River, to change its oil, the attached note read, and for nothing else, upon risk of death or worse; my sister had figured out how to duplicate all our dreams remotely with her Dreameograph Machine, which was what she called it; she received patents for design and utility; finally we found her on magazine covers for real, Time, Wired, even Smithsonian; one night she called to let me know she would never be returning home; every few months another poorly-wrapped package arrived, containing millipedes weaving cotton candy, things like that; before my sister’s untimely death-by-ski-jump, she sent to us a colossal bucket containing all the teeth the four of us had ever lost while asleep in dreams. 

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for Dmitriy Gutkovich 

Z.H. Gill works for a vanity label in West Hollywood, CA. His work has appeared in HOMINTERN and Forever Magazine.