What happens when you finally get a full 8 hours of sleep after months of 2 or 3 hours a night (if you are lucky––0 to 1 if you aren’t?)  The prescription your doctor gave you says it is a none-steroidal, none-addictive mild anxiety med that may make you sleepy. I got it half right. I got a full night’s sleep, but unfortunately carried my anxiety along with me into what felt like a full-night’s dream. The further irony is that it has been years since I’ve been able to remember my dreams. (And, you are doggone right. This is waaaaay more than 44 words. You can’t get it all right!!!) And I swear, every word I have written is the truth. I was about to answer the dVerse prompt last night but I absolutely could not get on the Internet and so gave up to fall into the sleep that produced this story which after years of no dream memory and at least three months of almost no sleep, I hope you give me the poetic license to tell. Not poetry, not 44 words, but the gospel truth. Now, I guess I really am in the doghouse?

Dogged Dreams

It is 5:58 in the morning and I was just awakened by my barking dogs…all three of them. There is a good side to the story as I was awakened from a dream in which absolutely everything went wrong. In the dream, after I had waited for two hours for an interviewer to show up, the man who was to introduce me actually gave such a long intro that he ended up essentially giving all of the informmation I was going to reveal in the interview, and even then, the interviewer  did not show up. His assistant did, however, to retrieve equipment that was actually equipment that belonged to me, and no matter what I said, he refused to believe me and took it anyway, saying if I wanted to bring it up with his company later, I could.

Then a friend came by saying she was going to the liquor store to buy Scotch and did I want her to get me some? Under no circumstances, I said, I badly needed a drink, but I hated Scotch. Could she get me a bottle of gin? “Done,” she said, then showed up proudly as I began my third hour of waiting for the interviewer (who never did show.) “Here you go,” she said, presenting me with a huge bottle that included a wooden stand that proudly announced its name:  “Scotch!” I had just pointed out her error to see her march away, furious, sure that I’d ordered the damn Scotch, and was about to follow her off the interview site after telling them they were the most poorly organized outfit I’d ever seen and that I was announcing the name of the person who took my equipment to the owner of the company, who happened to be my uncle(a lie)––when the dogs began to bark, thus saving me from an additional minute more of torment.

The dVerse Poets prompt was: Write about the dog days – of summer, of war. The dog-eared pages of your favorite novel. Tell us about a time you were sick as a dog, or give us a little hair of the dog. Make it rain cats and dogs. Put your poem through a downward-facing dog yoga pose, or let it run with the dogs. Let sleeping dogs lie, or tell the truth about this dog-eat-dog world – or anything else you doggone please. Just be sure your poem is exactly 44 words long, including some form of the word dog – or you’ll be in the doghouse. 

Image made with help of AI