That night, when I hiked the quilt to my chin, I climbed into my buried dreams and met my past life. The dirty-palm-farmer who slurped passion fruit under a star-glazed sky. I recalled, in a burst of clarity, how he sank into the clods like a hot stick of butter, laughing that death was the 8th day of the week, that all his questions would be learned in the dirt. I spent hours watching rivers in dark rooms babble. I watched them froth through the patchwork of my shoddy metal culvert. To my left, the line between ambition and delusion was so thin I could've squeezed it out of a tube. I tossed caution to the wind and walked to the end of the street, where a busker wearing a panama hat drew a bend on his harmonica. He pointed in the middle distance and told me that the place I was seeking was somewhere between the marshland pleasure crafts and the birds circling above, worms locked in their beaks. Then I asked the man about the skeleton key—Where on Earth did you find it? It's obsolete, the man said, lowering his tune. You're in the room already, there's no need to knock.