I woke in the middle of the night from a dream in which I was one of four young boys in an urban environment helping someone move.

We were loading boxes into a moving van, and at one point the owner drove his car up a ramp at the rear and on into the van. When he came back outside and began folding up the ramp, it slipped, and ended up hitting him in the head multiple times. There was blood everywhere.

At this point, I suddenly realized, like one of those characters in novels who suddenly become aware that they’re in a novel, that I was one of the four kids from The Wire—only I had no idea which one I was.

I knew, though, that my odds of success in life or even of just survival weren’t very good, so I struggled to figure out my identity. Was I Michael, or Dukie, or … ?

Then I was awake. I was extremely unsettled, and it took me awhile to fall back to sleep, which is unusual for me.