It was either a dream or the deprivation of it. I’m too chickenshit for hallucinogenics,
            but still, I craved escape, conspired against all logics & here’s the part I must whisper:

Scholars believe sleeplessness is next to godliness. It’s another, looser mode of seeing. 

I drank cold-brew past-noon; misplaced my melatonin gummies; doom-scrolled until
            blue-light invaded my dopamine receptors; pulled an all-nighter and then an all-dayer

until about 83 hours in, I stare-contest the ceiling & all the tiles slow-motion mosaic

into a face. Instantly, I knew this was God. Another look & I realized it was actually
            Meryl Streep, but I couldn’t tell if it was Devil Wears Prada Meryl Streep or Sophie’s 

Choice Meryl or (God/Meryl forbid) The Iron Lady Meryl Streep. Omnipotent Meryl

Streep grins from my ceiling & I hadn’t even won my first Oscar yet. How absolutely
            tragic. A million Meryl Streeps & all of them with impeccable accent work. How does

she make it look so natural? I stare into the altar of Meryl’s cheekbones. Meryl speaks:

Your problem is that you haven’t got the courage for this fight & she says that so sweetly,
            I forget that’s indeed a quote from Iron Lady & indeed, I haven’t got the courage to

fight God as Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher. That’s Meryl’s trick. Like God, Meryl

can play anything, be anything & I’d believe it. She doesn’t need to dream. She just Is:
            Meryl Fucking Streep, record-winner of 21 Academy Award nominations & suddenly!

life’s an actors roundtable: Charlize Theron & Anne Hathaway & Meryl Streep & me,

somehow me. We exchange monologues & they’re all so kind when I attempt an Irish
            accent. Cate Blanchett recommends her dialect coach. Margot Robbie suggests inner-

child work. Is this what fame really feels like? Like divinity? Meryl Streep laughs & I

giggle, because I haven’t slept in 89 hours & I’m so slap-happy, but also because like…
            Duh! It’s Meryl Streep! A hyperreal hallucinatory metaphor of Meryl or maybe God(??)

so I figure… why not inquire about the universe? & here’s the part I really-really must

whisper, silent as sacrament: I ask Meryl Streep if she’s actually God & of course Meryl
            Streep is God. Meryl Streep plays everyone including God & including Me & also I lied,

I thought I lied in bed, but I lied about that part. It wasn’t the ceiling I stare-contested

but my bathroom mirror (this according to Meryl Streep). The actors roundtable as my
            congregation, Meryl Streep as Holy Ghost, I panicked. I’m not a skilled enough actor

to play God. So I’m shame-sobbing in what I think is either purgatory or my bedroom

& hey wait I’m dreaming!! So I can go anywhere but all I can dream is stock footage of
            a meadow & specifically it’s the Windows XP screensaver meadow with a Getty Images

watermark. I needed a mythology but mine was too shallow. I invented the wrong God.

I’m the dummy-god of this dummy-digital-meadow until I stare-contest the Sun & that’s
            Meryl Streep’s face in the Sun like that Sun Baby in the Teletubbies & like… why not??

Meryl Streep shoves a bottle of melatonin gummies into my mouth & I say I’ll miss you

‍Meryl & she insists I refer to her only as Meryl Streep because we aren’t friends like that.
            I have no religion save for Meryl Streep. I’ve never prayed & believed in it. No worship

for me, I think. I want to be God, but I miss Meryl Streep & God, I missed myself too.