January 3

The shrink says, "Everything depends on how many stuffed animals you had as a boy," and my mother tells me my father was left-handed and so is my son and they're both named Joe whose favorite stuffed animal was a bear called Sweetheart while I, the sole constant in this dream, am carrying a little girl who has a gun in her hand as I climb a brick wall on the other side is unknown territory but it has to be better than this chase down hilly streets where the angel disguised as a man with red hair drives the wrong way down a one-way street so he arrives late at the library where his son is held hostage he breaks in lifts the boy in his arms and tells the one kind man he had met that he and his brother would be saved but the others who had mocked him would surely die