A Friday Morning Housing Dream

I’m trying to nap on a living room couch, but I can hear the neighbor’s kids trying to teach their dog to growl at people. I get up to explore this new apartment, where the entryway has a floor-to-ceiling pole with hooks for hanging coats.

The kitchen has an island and a small roll cart all stocked with new pots and pans and dinnerware in red, and the island has a small tray with corn holders but beneath it set into the countertop is a dispenser of different corn holders. The cabinets are fully stocked with stuff I will never eat, as if someone else decided what people should have stocked in their new apartments.

Next to the kitchen are a set of sliding glass doors into a balcony-sized alcove which then has a plastic curtain which opens to the outside. All the while, I’m trying to keep my cat from following me out of the apartment.

There’s a shared yard behind the building. To my right an alcove much like my own, and then a low fence between us and another building much like ours, and it’s large shared yard, much like ours, and a neighbor is drying lots of tiny outfits on the fence as if maybe they are a collector of dolls, or at least I hope that’s why.

My building’s shared yard curves down and away to the right toward more grassy areas and in the distance there is a platform like a dock but not to the sea because it’s built into the air where a blimp is docked.

To the left, the yard opens up into a wider space with a central fountain that’s empty, which I circle to get a look at what else is around, and behind the corner of my building—which I now see is clearly a set of row houses with a tower of apartments above them—are more such buildings. They all look like Hasbro built enormous plastic housing towers with soft curves for corners and nearly-pastel colors.

As I loop around the fountain, a neighbor tries to get my attention to sign me up for someone to take out my trash, but I say I can take out my own trash. On my way back to my unit, I see that next door to me is the family whose kids had been trying to teach heir dog to growl at people.

I wake up.