The Light and the Lime

There's something not quite right tonight. Looking down at my own hands, they look like they don't belong to me. A surreal aura penetrates deep within me, causing the world as I know it to melt. The lights on the ceiling turn into distant and dim stars, and the floor below me moistens to a shallow seashore. The voices from the people around me break into cacophony of shrill seagulls. The perfume of citrus and roasted almonds waft between my nostrils.

Suddenly, the waters rush high over my shoulders and it all turns to nothingness. I'm lost within my own internal universe, where nothing is real, but a copy of a copy of what I remember. I drift along in the calm waters, letting my new life deep into my pores.

The lights return. I'm in a bed, but there's a feeling of powerlessness. I try to open my mouth, but nothing comes out but a gurgle and a squeak. The nurse looks at me as though I've transformed into a sloth. Her words traipse into my ears and slip down my throat. I cock my head and the room goes dark once again.

This time the calm sea is in a tumult. Writhing and wrenching this way and that, with no reprieve in between. I nearly drown in memories that are slammed together. My first car is my best man at my wedding. My sister is the dean of my college handing me a bowling ball with a paycheck etched on it. It all swallows me up and tears me apart in its splintered maw.

The light comes back, dull and hazy. My wife sits next to the bed, grasping my paw, talking of asphalt and aluminum siding and how it's much more nutritious than the neighbors lawn. My mouth opens for a second time in what seems to be an eon. The legs to the coffee table reserved a flight to my grandmothers den. My wife holds me close and tears burn into the sheet covering my chest.

We'll all be Lakers once you break that credenza.