I dreamt that my alarm didn’t go off and I slept for three whole centuries.

And only if my alarm had gone off, I wouldn't have lost everything. 

If my alarm had gone off, I wouldn’t have lost my loved ones after ignoring them for a lifetime. 

If my alarm had gone off, I wouldn’t have missed my morning work meetings, or the HR  meeting where they put me on a performance-improvement-plan, or the one where I help interview the man who’s going to replace me, or the one after that where they finally fire me, and  I lose my meager fortune of 473 dollars and a one-bedroom apartment lease, and little,  immovable scatters of books I haven’t finished, records I never listened to, old poems in old boxes I never had the gull to revisit, and a dried spot of vomit on the carpet where once I fucked  death on the bed of a bottle. 

If my alarm had gone off, I would’ve relented something that has always weighed me. 

If my alarm had gone off, I would've filled out yet another form that might’ve finally delivered me. An H-1B application, an I-129, I-589, new SEVIs number, a marriage, maybe, a morsel of that rotten, green gold, anything. Anything that might’ve finally convinced the owners of this stolen land that I’m not an invasive plant. 

If my alarm had gone off, I wouldn’t have missed paying rent and gotten evicted and had to throw away all my furniture, and the dwelling memories beneath the IKEA table, or the heartbreak boiling in the Target water kettle, or the little dream I used as seat cushions on the chairs a friend gave me before exiting my life. 

If my alarm had gone off, I might've learned to swim. I might've finally understood that the water means no harm. The water only hugs those who do not fear it. And I fear everything, all the time. 

If my alarm had gone off, I wouldn't have grown into regression, into that lonely child in trouble. The child whose palms knew the texture of the stick, the skin deigned and singed and betrayed, the wrath of men so massive and so fucking broken. I left all of that with my dishes in the sink, and now I pretend the sky is all that matters.

If my alarm had gone off, I would’ve remembered the wreckage of my hometown. The bombings, slow, then reiterative, then the shock delayed, trailing the sound. Fractured, priceless things. I would’ve remembered the violent acts of bullet and the ones of neglect. I would’ve remembered enough as to not forgive. The bodiless, floating shapes before their wings were cut.  The murmurs of women, holding the forts of a whole nation, before they were shushed. A child remembering—in a fleeting light—that his body is sacred, and his own. Those were priceless things. Those were priceless things. 

If my alarm had gone off, I would've relearned my native language. I would've planted some fruits of honesty that I had never found in it before. I would've rediscovered the sciatic nerve of the language, the guttural strengths ينملع ينیلخو كبحا and the tender flows مش ينیمسایل . I would've learned just enough to tell my brother why I cannot call him. That I love him deeply but speaking to him reminds me of a time when I was hurting. I would've found in the secret pathways, in the forests and dungeons, the cities and tunnels of my mother tongue a way to say this cruel cutting thing without wounding him. I might've been able to, somehow. I might have. 

If my alarm had gone off, I might have had time to reconcile with my mother, to tell her that she deserved a steadier ground, that she deserved the right to divorce my father, the luxury of starting over, the means of quitting. That I know now a child should not be built of debris, and that her earthquakes built me, and still, I forgive her, and part of me still loves her. That I wish we had picked the pieces together instead of building a house with all the rubble. 

If my alarm had gone off, a miracle would’ve occurred. My boulder of bills and dues would've reached the summit of the endless hill, then dissolved. One must imagine Sisyphus free of debt, after all. 

If my alarm had gone off, my body wouldn’t have aged—in absentia and oblivion—into this gray, unlovable thing. It wouldn’t have grown nasolabial folds and forehead wrinkles that become borders to remind me which parts of this skull had kept me alone all this time; the deviated septum, maybe, the hair on the leg, gone unwaxed now, had grown into noxious weeds.  The kingdom of hair on the head, gone. The nails bit and chewed so often that they learned to grow already crooked and cracked. Killed by clenched teeth, and reborn with the memory of their murder. I might’ve looked at the mirror, before this hurricane of age, and during, and after it too,  and loved my face a little more often…whenever I could. I might’ve even imagined kissing myself, my top lip touching the bottom one, both parallel and abreast, sending a letter that whispers: this makes all those neurons and nerves worth all the trouble and terrible pain they bring. 

If my alarm had gone off, I might’ve moved to a new city that doesn’t have the biting air of midwestern winters or the American muscle memory of insisting that we can only become a nation by spreading our despair. A bigger city with wider sidewalks, livelier nights, a place for every two human feet to rest and to be. A ground that welcomes all the contradictions of one human body without a preface or condition. Without a requirement of prayer or obligations of grace. A place where I do not worry about what to do with my limbs.

If my alarm had gone off, I would’ve been part of this cosmic epilogue, this final chapter of a planet carrying life into both decay and fruition, the last time the earth covers us with a blanket as the whole of our species falls asleep on the couch we’ve traded and burned and made into a meager, lifeless thing. A civilization of cascading stress or crushing routine. A meager, lifeless thing. 

If my alarm had gone off, I might have made a new friend. I might have fallen in love and trusted the fall that had broken me so many times before. 

If my alarm had gone off, I might have learned to be a person who doesn’t break everything. That doesn’t bury beauty in dissonance, abundance in indulgence, luxury in decadence, art in obsession. 

If my alarm had gone off, I might have finished this poem and read it over and read it to another.

So I wake up. 

I wake up in the middle of the night, and 

I check the alarm on my phone all night to make sure it’s on, and 

it's the right time, and 

it's in the AM not PM, and 

my phone isn't on mute or do not disturb or airplane mode, and 

that the wifi is on, just in case the alarm app happens to need it tonight, and that the battery is charged, of course, but it's also plugged to the wall, and I drink water and make sure not to pee so as to sleep uncomfortably enough to wake up early. 

Now… What is left of this drawl, plotless story is a minute and total detail. Do I open the bottle of wine, and stop worrying, and become peaceful in warts and flaw and mistake, then actually sleep through the alarm? 

Or do I not?