Sleep, there will be Love

I learned something sad about myself today, as I woke from a bedfull of twisting dreams. I discovered that, which I have known for years, yet denied and iced over like a mid-winter stream. I am completely heartbroken for a love affair that I have never been a part of, never touched the lingering ends of the hairs of. Once, when I was young, younger, I thought I had had it, I released her only with a mighty struggle, even after she had left me. I couldn’t let go of the idea of a bond that really only ever counted in my mind, not hers, or at least that is how I’ve left that tattered page of an unwritten, insignificant history lie; skittering across a flat, grassy field in a windstorm. And now that breeze is hitting my face again with last night’s dream. As it has happened so many times before, I hold a hand that searches for mine in reciprocal earnest. Fingertips do not come crashing together like misguided trains in the middle of nowhere, but intertwine lithely as some odd courtship dance of snakes would progress. A soft, inspecting cadre of fingers torturing wanton wrists with anticipation, coupled with knowing glances that always align, mystically, with the rays of the sun coming in the window. For a minute, she is the girl from fourth grade, half a foot taller than me at the time, who I asked out in front of most of a classroom. But it is no certainty, as this is always the case with these dreams; SHE is an amalgam of knowns and unknowns and even the unknowns carry with them a familiarity of joy and compassion, interest and concern. The wind from the window of the bus blows the finer ends of her hair just across my face (Nerve endings aren’t supposed to be this accurate in the dreamstate, or are they?). We smile, washing away imperfection in our world, even if just for a moment and not a word has yet been uttered between the two. The only way to describe this sensation would be the word “home” (And now, maybe it begins to make sense to me why home has been such a hard thing to find all my adult life). The changes in this amalgamation of SHE continue the way that subtle, nearly unnoticeable ripples of hallucinations can blend together to create a constant: something with the same heartbeat, same innards, but never exactly the same surface, like a young planet in turmoil. Now we are walking, instantly, suddenly off whatever bus we where on. This time-space jump only noticeable, or even notable, upon waking, as it never matters in the heaven of dreams. Everything we encounter from here on is familiar, as if we both owned it in our collective and individual hearts. The details themselves are barely memorable, describable nor worth mentioning, but the very feeling of finding home together is what is so incredible. The sadness of it all is that I felt it ripping away, like a limb being torn to pieces as I watched, while I was waking and then had to go through the normal phase of disappointment as I lay in bed, counseling myself to reaccept this waking reality; to force myself to acquiesce to currently living a life where the love affair is lived all in those wonderful, free, cerebral moments of sleep.