Damp Linens

I know I'm not the only woman who cries in silence, tears soaking her pillow, curled around herself as she tries to contain the aching emptiness that threatens to consume her.

I know I'm not alone in wondering why I should be so lonely.

But dear Goddess, right now in this moment I feel so isolated, so lost in the shadows, and I can't convince myself that there's any way out of it or that there's anyone or anything that can (or wants to) throw me a line, however tenuous, to help me pull myself into a better place.

Back to dreams, back to the ephemeral, illusory comfort of he-who-never-was because my psyche doesn't want to accept that maybe this is all we get - an empty bed, empty arms, and a heart full of thick, smothering aloneness that leaves me fighting to breathe and wondering where I went so terribly wrong.

Last night I woke from a dream
More real
Than the night-dark room around me
Lingering warmth
Reminded me
Where your hand rested
Phantom hand
And where you'd kissed
Phantom lips
And my own lips burned
With the memory of having tasted you
Of wanting more

Was it real?
Did we ever really touch?
Or did I dream it?

I woke to an emptiness
Not strictly physical
Returned to slumber
Where I could lose myself
In a dream more real
Than the night-dark room around me.

Stupid Misfiring Neurons

Have you ever wanted something? Wanted it more than you've ever wanted anything else? Ached to have it? Just about needed it to live? Yeah, me too.

Have you ever been so close to having what you wanted that you could taste it? Or brush it with your fingertips? But every time you get close...it's just a little out of reach? Yeah, me too.

Have you ever had a dream that seemed so real, it lingered after you woke, almost memory? Yeah, me too.

I love a man. He's a good man, easy to love. He loves me back. I am not a good woman, not easy to love...but he's managing it. Bless him. Sometimes I have to stop, close my eyes, and breathe, I'm so overwhelmed by the feelings he engenders in me. Sometimes I think of him and smile and feel like I'm floating...and then I look around to speak to him and he's not right there next to me and I crash back down.

Last night, I had a bad dream. He doesn't need to know about it. He has enough troubles of his own right now, he doesn't need my stupid misfiring neurons to burden him too. That's why I have this place, right? Sigh. He can't read it right now, anyway...one of his troubles, no Internet access. I am hoping he'll right that, for his sake and for the sakes of the other people who give a damn about him (I'm not the only one who loves him, whom he loves - he has a generous heart), but it'll be a while before he can.

So. Bad dream.

I dreamed he went away. Just up and left, off into the wilds of...I don't know where. He took his computer and his phone with him, but he didn't answer e-mails or calls. He just...forgot me. I didn't matter any more. In the dream it seemed I never mattered in the first place, and he was just tired of me so he decided not to bother any more. I was lost, confused, and deeply hurt...and I couldn't breathe, couldn't think...I was blinded by a sort of desperation to find him, to know he was alright, because within the dream itself, at first I didn't know he didn't want me any more, that I was annoying him with my persistence; all I knew was that he'd disappeared and I was frantic to find him and couldn't.

After searching for a little while I realized he just didn't want me, and my heart shattered. I woke up.

That dream has lingered. All morning, it has haunted me, teasing the edges of my mind. I know it's just a dream. My admittedly limited rational self knows it was a dream. But my emotional self? Yeah...that part of me is convinced it was real and he's going to stop calling and stop answering and leave me empty and alone...

Sigh.

You'd never know that a few months ago, before I met him, I had made up my mind I would just be alone for the rest of my life and be OK with that - that I figured I'd be better off...everyone would be better off...

Stupid misfiring neurons...why can't I dream the winning lottery numbers??

Staccato Dreaming

Went to sleep: 3 AM

Woke up: 4 AM, 6 AM, 7 AM, 8:30 AM, 9 AM

Got up: 10 AM

Figure half an hour to get back to sleep every time I woke up, sometimes a little more.

In those brief moments of dipping into Morpheus' realm, he and I danced frantic steps, a tarantella of images, sounds, impressions, whirling past my mind's eye, dizzying.

Morpheus, by the way, tends to step on your toes when he's dancing with you. But he has a nice smile and laughs freely, and he's always sorry after, if he bruised your piggies.

I dreamed of fire. Of looking at a map on the computer, some sort of satellite image, and seeing fires raging from Texas up to Canada and East to Alabama. Walls, curtains of flames flickering, eerily still and silent, not marching onward but just...there. They could not be extinguished, and I remember remarking that someone set the Salamander loose.


I dreamed of wind, sweeping across the continents, a wall of air scrubbing the land clean. Trees bowed, bent, or broke. Houses lost roofs, people were flung about like rag dolls. It was relentless, a sound that accompanied day, night, thought, constant, notable only in its rare absence. The Sylphs were on the march.

I dreamed of a flood, flowing forth from a bathroom sink, filing the house I was in, flowing outward into the neighborhood that looked alien in the dream but was, I knew, a place I'd lived before. The water filled every hollow, every declivity, rolled and rippled onward until it built itself into a tremendous wave...the Undine making her presence felt.

I dreamed of trembling earth, of mountains tumbling down, landing in scattered piles of stone, dirt, debris. Trees toppled, and houses and buildings, and no one could take a steady step - walking required loose hips, loose backs, or the ability to float above it all. The surface cracked, and out poured gas, fire, heat, and a sort of howling, creaking, shrieking noise, as if the planet was being rent to her core...and the Gnomes were tunneling, tunneling, tunneling...

I dreamed of a space shuttle going up, up, up... I was there, outside the shuttle, perhaps a cloud or the wind itself, watching the fragile roaring tube force itself through the air and into the cold dark. At the same time, I was a person on the ground, in a tall building. I was trying to find all my possessions in a room and pack them up, carry them downstairs. As I worked, I was reassuring someone else in the room that the shuttle was fine, that now was ignition, and now it was climbing, and now the main fuel tanks were done and shed, step by step telling the other person what was happening and that everything was fine.

I was carrying boxes down the stairs, wondering when I got all this stuff in my short stay, and a little grumbly because someone was supposed to be helping me but he (don't ask me who - in this dream, everyone was "someone", indistinct, amorphous) was too busy doing...I don't know what, but it wasn't helping. I had to be certain I got everything out. I don't know why, only that it was urgent.

All of these things I dreamed in minutes, snatches, fragments, staccato dreaming coming in fits and starts as I tried (without trying, because making an actual effort to sleep rather defeats the purpose) to sleep.

I wonder what I will dream tonight??

Wearying Dreams

Two wakings, this morning, both hard to bear - not for the waking, but for what came before...the dreaming.


The first, early, when I would have happily slept on, wrapped in Someone's arms, warm...feeling as though I fit there. Sweetness...but troubled, nonetheless, by dreams.


Dreams in which I sought...something. Wandered lost, alone, bereft, aching from the internal cold that poured from me in waves of frost and fog. I was looking for warmth, I think, though it be from a candle's flame, but all was gray, bleak...empty...and that light, that heat, was always just out of reach, hinted at on the horizon but never close enough to see, to touch, to believe real.


At some point The world changed, and I was surrounded by whispers that fell onto my skin like an acid mist, droplets burning chill through my skin, down to my core. It won't last. You have gone too far. Unwise. Unwanted. Used up. Tossed away. Fool.


I wanted to drown out the voices...the voice...my voice...but I could not. It echoed even as I woke and watched Someone prepare for his day, for the part he will spend away from me and this little room we've made into the greater part of our world for these few short, precious days we have together. Room. Cave. Den. Haven. At least, for me...insidious voice, telling me it's an interlude for Him...poking at the softest places in my heart, because she knows so well where and how to hurt me, and she is driven to do so whenever she can. She is cruel. I am cruel.


I watched him move about, smiled, drifted, watched more. When he lay beside me again, I touched his face, his hair, his arm, trying to teach his texture to my fingertips...loving, yes...but also, in part, trying to make them remember so when he's gone (the voice says he will be gone, he is ephemeral...insidious voice) I will still have him there...in the nerves and sinew of my own hands, that love touching him so softly, so tenderly. I watched him smile, eyes closed, face relaxed, looked and looked and could not get my fill, could not take him in enough to reach the place the dreams still roiled, burn them away and replace them with...something.


Once he was gone, I slept again, fitful, alone, lonely. I wrapped my arms around the pillow he's only just been using, breathed deep, scented him, dozed a little deeper. This time, I dreamed we made love...sweet...slow...tender...and woke before we finished, before he drew in his breath and stilled, lost in that collection of moments that are climax, face set in a rictus of bliss...


When I woke the second time, not long after I had slept, I again felt the emptiness...and wondered, aloud, what is wrong. Why would it make me sad, to dream such beauty? The voice, ever faithful, answered...because pleasure is fleeting, and you don't deserve a full measure...of yours or anyone else's. Evil voice...telling the truth just often enough to make it impossible to ignore...planting that small seed that grows so quickly into a forest of doubt, fear, loss, where I wander lost, alone, bereft, aching from the internal cold that pours from me in waves of frost and fog, without even the dream of a candle's small, dear flame to warm me...

That Thing You Do

I don't pretend to understand, sir, what it is you do.

I don't mean do as in work, as in polite conversation, what do you do?

I don't mean do as in what you do to thrive, to bring light and lightness of being in to your life.

I don't mean hobbies, pastimes, or how you fix your hair.

I refer to what you do to me.

I mean how you make me want to be...someone...somewhere...else. Better. New.

What is that?

And still I dream of someone who isn't there and wake with an ache that can't filled, calmed, soothed, because you can't caress something with nothing. You can't fill an empty place with dreams, wishes, hope.

Frustrating, sir, frustrating.

Fearful, sir, fearful.

The Angel knows better, she does, than to give way, to stand down, to open, unfold...trust.

The Angel is a fool.

What is that thing you do, sir?

Trembling

I woke trembling this morning, a sort of all-over quake.

It was the dream that did it.

I dreamed I was Kate again, back in her time (whenever it was - I cannot say, there is never a calendar and she doesn't answer when I ask, perhaps because I am a ghost to her, or the faint whisper of a dream she doesn't understand) and in her place (I know this one - Ireland, although not as we know it today).

It was dusk, and she stood with a number of other young women in a circle, surrounded by another circle, men. They were laughing, smiling, the women turning deosil, the men widdershins. In the center, beside the balefire, the High Priest and High Priestess watched, waited, listened to the inner call.

With an unspoken accord, Priest and Priestess made their choices, selected a woman, a man, and led them away into the fields. The two circles slowed, stilled, and each woman faced a man. They joined hands and wandered into the fields, newly furrowed for spring planting.

Odd, how in dreams one may know things the waking mind cannot, will not, does not want to know.

Kate was exuberant, joyful, a sexual woman who was not ashamed of her wantonness, of the pleasure she took from men or the pleasure they took from her. Not taken. Freely given.

I watched, the moon above smiling down on these children of the earth who were performing a ritual as old as agriculture - showing the land how to go, encouraging fertility, feeling their blood run as the sap in the trees, fiery, hot, rushing and roaring to bring forth new life.

I watched, but I also experienced, because I was, after all, once Kate. At least - I think I was. I believe I was. Can't prove it, though. I guess it doesn't matter, because a delusion, to the deluded, is a real as anything.

Dark earth below, loamy, soft, richly perfumed. Moonlit sky above, scattered stars providing soprano counterpoint to the moon's soft alto crooning. Lovers tender, wild, consumed and consuming, caught up in Spring's symphony, chorus of night creatures creating a tapestry of song punctuated by lover's cries. Beautiful.

I woke with the dream's dawn, feeling Kate's release shivering through me, a shadow of her elation still with me, an invisible robe of satiation wrapped around me.

Sometimes I envy Kate - she was so easy in her skin, so content to be who she was, so fearless and unabashed about her sexuality. If she wasn't, isn't, real, I don't care - she's a part of me, a reminder of what I could be, could have, if only I can learn to let go.

Whether from memory or wanting, I cannot say, but some part of me resonates with that dream, the unthinking, the passionate part. All these hours later, I am still shaking, fine tremors in my hand forcing me to retype, correct spelling errors, clean up spilled water, catch dropped things.

I am reminded that I have neglected a part of my life, of my psyche, for too long. I hope it goes away...and I hope it remains.