This morning I walked into my backyard before I had been born.
The sun apologized for arriving late and folded itself into the pocket of a butterfly. I accepted the explanation because every clock in the garden had melted into birds sometime during the night, leaving no witnesses capable of contradicting either of us.
The grass recognized my footsteps before I placed them.
Each blade rose from the earth like a green eyelash attached to the sleeping face of the planet. The entire lawn inhaled when I exhaled. Somewhere beneath the roots an enormous invisible animal rolled over in its sleep, causing continents to dream of becoming seeds.
I have often wondered whether I walk across the grass or whether the grass dreams me into existence one footprint at a time.
The zinnias have abandoned the responsibility of being flowers.
They have become fragments of laughter crystallized into color. Their petals revolve slowly around invisible centers, like tiny galaxies pretending to be gardens. Every bloom wears the face of someone I almost remembered from another lifetime that may not have happened yet.
One of the flowers bowed toward me.
When I bowed back, the horizon became a staircase.
The lilies are different.
They are unopened letters addressed to God, returned to sender because eternity forgot to include a forwarding address. White flames bloom without burning. They smell like conversations between clouds. Sometimes they close their petals, not because evening has arrived, but because they are embarrassed by how loudly silence can shine.
Butterflies drift through the air carrying pieces of unfinished weather upon their wings.
One lands on a zinnia.
Immediately the flower begins dreaming that it can fly while the butterfly dreams that it has roots.
Neither notices the exchange.
The bumblebees are ancient philosophers disguised as improbable mathematics.
How can something so heavy remain suspended?
The answer hums just beyond hearing.
Each bee carries a tiny black-and-yellow cathedral inside its chest where invisible monks manufacture gravity backwards. Their buzzing is the sound of certainty dissolving into honey.
A squirrel descends from the maple tree carrying an acorn much older than history.
He pauses.
Looks directly into my eyes.
Then disappears sideways into Tuesday.
The tree continues pretending nothing unusual has occurred.
The old wooden fence between my neighbors and me has forgotten that it was once a tree.
Now it believes itself to be the spine of an elderly book whose pages have blown away, leaving only memories bound together by rain.
Its knots are sleeping eyes.
Its cracks are wrinkles in time.
Moss writes green hieroglyphics across its face, recording events that have not yet become memories.
Sometimes I hear voices coming from the other side.
Not my neighbors.
Earlier versions of myself discussing what color tomorrow should be.
Around three sides of my property the wrought iron fence grows upward like fossilized music.
The black bars are tuning forks holding the wind in place.
Vines climb them not because they seek sunlight but because iron dreams of becoming forests again.
When moonlight touches the fence, every spear-tip transforms into the compass needle of a machine designed to locate forgotten childhoods.
No one notices except the crickets, who immediately begin applauding.
In the corner of the yard sleeps the old storm sewer.
It is not a drain.
It is the pupil of the earth.
Rain falls into it because the sky wishes to see what dreams are happening underground.
Sometimes I imagine enormous fish swimming through impossible rivers beneath my property, carrying umbrellas made from autumn leaves while reading newspapers printed in languages spoken only by thunder.
The sewer knows all of this.
It refuses to explain.
Near the back door the air conditioner chants metallic prayers.
Its fan does not rotate.
It unwinds.
Each revolution peels another invisible layer from the afternoon until summer briefly reveals the skeleton of winter hiding inside it.
The machine breathes in heat and exhales forgotten Januaries.
Occasionally I thank it.
It responds by vibrating at exactly the frequency of distant glaciers.
The two garbage containers wait beside the shed like patient twins guarding the border between memory and disappearance.
One eats objects.
The other consumes excuses.
Together they digest yesterday until tomorrow becomes light enough to carry.
At night they whisper to raccoons about civilizations constructed entirely from empty soup cans and cracked flowerpots.
The shed behind them is larger inside than outside.
Every broken tool becomes an unfinished constellation.
Every bent nail remembers being lightning.
A cracked flowerpot still believes it contains a civilization of invisible roses.
Spiderwebs are maps of countries that folded themselves into pockets no larger than a sigh.
Dust is not dust.
It is powdered time settling gently onto abandoned intentions.
Eventually I understand something impossible.
The backyard is not behind my house.
The house has been constructed inside the backyard’s dream.
The grass is dreaming the flowers.
The flowers are dreaming the butterflies.
The butterflies are dreaming the bees.
The bees are dreaming the squirrels.
The squirrels are dreaming the fences.
The fences are dreaming the sewer.
The sewer is dreaming the shed.
The shed is dreaming the forgotten objects.
The forgotten objects are dreaming me.
And every morning I awaken believing I have stepped outside, when in truth I have merely wandered deeper into the magnificent sleep of the garden that has been imagining my existence since before the first seed remembered the shape of the sky.
LINES BY LIMING 