Last night I dreamed that I cut my own tongue off.  Like my bangs, it was getting long and needed a trim.  I don’t recall the actual shearing; just holding my severed tongue in my left hand as I stood in a nameless and faceless friends kitchen.  There was no blood, and no pain, and I could speak normally.  I looked at my friend (who had a small child with her, if it matters) and said, “What do you think I should do with it?  It seems a shame to waste it.  Do you think anyone would want to eat it?”

“Probably not,” they replied.

“Maybe your cats would eat it?” I offered.  “Or I could put it in a ziplock baggie and freeze it for later?”

Then I had a moment of terror.  Was my tongue disgusting looking now, all ragged and short and bloody?  Why, oh why had I cut off my tongue? I placed my fingers inside my mouth and was relieved to find that it was already growing back and had roughly the shape of a normal tongue.  I was surprised, because the part I held in my hand looked like an entire tongue.  My tongue must have been even longer than I thought, I reasoned.

At this point in the dream I woke up enough to realize the horrible reality of having one’s tongue severed.  In real-life I put my real-life hands to my real-life mouth and made sure I still had a tongue.  Yes, it was there, resting languidly against my teeth like a bird who had outgrown its cage.  Later in the day the recollection of the dream would disturb me, but we weren’t there yet.  Half-asleep, I just rolled over and returned to Dreamland.  With my whole tongue.

Here are some other weird dreams I written about in the past:

• ‘there’s just no accounting for taste’
• ‘maman’