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I Never Dream about Dinosaurs

Last night, a Plesiosaurus ate my dead best friend

in the depths of REM sleep.

I never dream about dinosaurs, I say,

recounting the dream to my husband; and then I wonder

if I’ve been living my life all wrong

this entire time.

A Leviathan, a nightmare, a nervous system operated by Medulla Oblongata alone; hunger as a Jurassic deity, hunger as God, a being ultimately driven to survive by good ol’ Natural Selection itself; focused solely on prey, on the hunt, and the Plesiosaurus never had to worry about health insurance or making rent.

I tend to dream about being chased

or performing onstage when I’ve forgotten the role; recurring stress dreams that make me feel

like I haven’t had a wink of sleep at all.

I tend to dream about my dead best friend when I am feeling unmoored and out-of-control,

and I’m sure Karl Jung would have an archetype to explain this;

but it is not usually the case that there is a reptile involved.

To fight; to flee; to freeze; to fold; to fawn; Plesiosaur as nothing but instinct, honed razor-sharp by millennia of sheer repetition. They say the Plesiosaurus had the strongest bite force of the entire Cretaceous Period; they say there still might be one up there in Loch Ness. 

She would have been 40 this October, I say,

reminding myself of the tragedy for no particular reason at all; and then I wonder

if she hadn’t been living her life all wrong

what shenanigans we might still get into today.

The Plesiosaurus hunted by lying in wait, and the Plesiosaurus gave birth to live young like a snake, and the Plesiosaurus was actually thought to be warm-blooded; and with the insight of a lucid dream, I feel a sudden flash of kinship with the behemoth who last night consumed the only friend I have ever truly loved.

I never dream about dinosaurs

but I am grateful to see Lindsey again when I finally do,

my brain delighting in sense memories of skinny-dipping together in the early 2000s

in the breathless moments before she gets devoured

and I am left alone once more.

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Cuteness Aggression Is Most Definitely a THING

I want

to eat

my cat.

She implodes into herself like a supernova

emerges as a loaf

each slice of cat perfectly stacked in a row

like the vivisected horse in cinematic masterpiece The Cell (2000)

starring Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn.

You know the one.

I want

to squash

my cat.

They say the obsession is the thought

and the compulsion is the action;

they say you have to interrupt the two.

Dr. Marsha Linehan clawed her way out of Hell

to teach me about the dialectic between love and violence

but I can’t even stop projecting onto the poor kitty

my inability to tolerate emotional distress.

I want

to asphyxiate 

my cat.

I think to myself

I should wake this animal up

and a quarter of the time, she wants me to every time.

Folded in half in my arms like an infant,

limp like a protestor,

I feel the itch of OCD fade with this rush of oxytocin.

I want

to liquify

my cat.

Because I have cuteness aggression

and she is just that fucking cute.

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Bio:

Shannon Frost Greenstein (She/They) resides in Philadelphia with her children and soulmate. She is the author of “The Wendigo of Wall Street,” a novella forthcoming with Emerge Literary Press. Shannon is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy and a multi-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Pithead Chapel, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. Shannon was recently a finalist for the Ohio State University Press Journal Non/Fiction Prize. Follow her on her website at shannonfrostgreenstein.com or on Twitter at @ShannonFrostGre. Insta: @zarathustra_speaks

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