I had a dream that you submerged my body in the lake. My husband told me this, as he washed dishes after breakfast. He was so careful with the plates, slowly turning them in his hands as he washed away the remnants of French toast and syrup. I almost didn’t hear him, he spoke soft as he stared out the window. I wondered for a moment if he meant to speak aloud at all. His gaze was out the window, focused on a distant point—maybe the tree that grew on the hill behind our house, he was always looking at that tree. But then he turned to me, looked me directly in the eye, and asked, why the fuck would you do that?

In dreams, when I was a child, I’d get lost for days, weeks, once even for my entire lifetime. My mother called me “her good dreamer” and other mothers marveled at the way I would nap anywhere—the limbs of trees, the backs of cars, under tables at neighborhood birthday parties. In my dreams, I’d always be going somewhere else, I could never stay in one place. Sometimes my legs ached when I woke up, from all the trudging through forests, the swimming through oceans, the walking through cities I’d never been in before. But I’d never submerged anyone in a lake. So I turned to my husband, what are you talking about?

I don’t mean you, like in reality, I mean the dream you. Why would you push me under the water? He turned back to look out the window, hands returning to the work of dishes. His back turned to me reminded me of the first time we’d met. I’d been lying on the river bank, elbows spread wide so my hands could clasp behind my head, staring at the sky to watch clouds. I liked to find the shapes that I knew weren’t there—it was easy to say what a cloud might look like, much harder to figure out what it could never look like. I heard a splash and turned my gaze earthward, to a man at the river, who was trying in vain to skip a rock across the surface. As if you could do that on such a moving surface, there was something so hopeful in his foolishness. I’d yelled out, I don’t think they’ll skip. He’d turned to me, one hand going to shield his eyes so he could see me through the sunlight. I’m not trying to skip them, he said. I’m just throwing them.

Maybe I was mad at you? I ask him. I tried to imagine the stream of dream events that would lead to me wanting to sink him like a stone. He shrugged, I don’t think I’d done anything. He has moved on to drying the dishes, to the slow movement of towel across plates. Well, what happened before the submersion? I stood up from the table, walked to him, put my hands around his waist, tucked my head into the crook between his head and shoulder. That was the beginning, he said.

About a month after we were married, he’d told me that when he was a child he had used to sleep walk. His mother would find him halfway across town, some nights. His parents had rigged up bells, alarms, ways to make sure they heard him or he walked up. He told me that the strange thing was that he never dreamed of movement, he was always still in his dreams, removed as if he was watching a movie of someone else’s life. And then one day he stopped doing it, he started dreaming as himself. He never woke up again, outside, staring up at the night sky peppered with sharp stars.

Well, what was the end then? I asked. He stopped drying the plate in his hands, set it down, turned so we faced one another, his hands now on my waist, my hands again on his. Outside the birds in the trees were singing, the crickets were chirping, such sounds. He pulled me a little closer, let our bodies sway together to the sounds. Our hearts beating to the same tune for a moment, and then he spun me out into a single twirl. He said, I think you pulled me back out.

Chloe N. Clark’s poems and fiction appear in Apex, Future Fire, Little Fiction, Uncanny, and more. She is co-EIC of Cotton Xenomorph, writes for Nerds of a Feather, and teaches at Iowa State University. Her debut chapbook, The Science of Unvanishing Objects, is out now and she can be found on Twitter @PintsNCupcakes.