these days my dreams are too colorful, too surreal. a little too warped to try and interpret, a little too hard for my mind to want to remember. and I sleep fitfully, one image rolling into the next, a kaleidoscope of things I never understand…except one dream was different, a lucid moment in the middle of a nightmare. I dreamed we’d had the baby, a girl, and her name was Guinevere. we’d never moved, but instead carved a place for her out of the wall in the bedroom upstairs to share with her brother, a space of her own that hadn’t existed before. I slept below her crib on a pile of fur blankets, listening to her quiet breathing, waiting for her eyes to open. B came and lied down next to me, face curled into the curve between my neck and my shoulder. he looked up and spoke just once. ‘I love her.’
Last night I had a dream that you were walking a path that wound through ancient woods, through painted valleys…a path entrenched in uncertainty and terror, of bewilderment and danger. It was hazy and the clouds were thick. It was dark and the sky was purple, stars crystal, trees cast shadows against the sky a thousand feet tall. When you found me, it was daylight and the sun hovered just above your head, raining gold down on your hair, on the crown of flowers that covered your eyes. You’d come to tell me you’d found my field of orchids.
It was more than a dream…bigger than a dream. In my heart it was real, a memory from a past life where we were nomads, travelers, wanderers. I loved you then and I love you now…sisters, brothers, two sides of the same coin. A thousand moons and a thousand years could separate us and nothing would ever change…our lives spinning, orbiting, merging…and I think you’re the only one who understands that.
The other night I had a dream, the kind of dream that lingers with you long after you wake and your mind settles, the kind of dream you remember when your hair turns gray, your bones brittle, and your memories begin to wander. In this dream, I was in a house. In this house, the hallways were winding labyrinths, rooms opened to smaller rooms, and smaller rooms still. The rooms were full of people…people I’d only ever met in dreams, created in my head, thriving on my thoughts. I couldn’t find the stairs. I was trapped, looking for an old friend, looking for the labyrinth. Someone came to me, took the baby from my arms. “Search.” I let them take the baby. I searched. In the darkest corner of the house, I felt something in my hair. Gentle first, then thrashing. I was facing a mirror. In the mirror were the eyes of the man who was supposed to have my baby, lifting a winged beast to my head, no baby in his arms. I ran. He followed, the beast’s wings flapping, mouth open to strip the hair off my head, devour my soul. I had to find my baby. I kept running. And there he was…on a broken ledge beneath the rotting staircase, dangling on the splintered wood, so close to falling. I reached for him, held him to my heart and ran into the sunlight. An old woman sat beneath a gnarled and smoking tree, black branches twisted and charred. “Your friend,” she whispered, ‘would like to talk to you.” From the ground she pulled a flower, dead, brittle, broken. She handed it to me. “Speak.” I held the flower to my ear, thorns drawing blood from my cheek. I heard a voice. It was cold, cruel…the voice of a dragon. It wasn’t my friend. The voice laughed into my ear and the sound hurt, pained me, scarred me. I wanted it to stop. I crumbled the flower in my hand, dust shimmering dead in the light. I threw it, begged the wind to carry it far…far away. It fell at my feet. The voice wasn’t silenced, the vile laughter rained down from the sky. I cried. I held my baby and I cried. One tear fell from my eyes, mixed with the blood on my cheek. Where it landed, it stained the ground crimson and the sun exploded into a thousand stars.
