My mother used to say, “I am not writing the book, the book is writing me” (she was an author, in amongst a myriad other roles in this world).
Almost every time I write something in my little journals, or get lost in a post here, I get that feeling. Like my fingers know the words and my brain is just the conduit for them to get tapped out on this here keyboard.
Today’s had that air to it. Running on far too little sleep, irritation levels of whizz and an inability to just get things done because something demands my attention immediately. So, here is what I just sat and wrote and got lost in for a bit. These were my thoughts on waking today.
(some context – I had a very good friend who died in a car accident when I was 17. At least once a year, I dream of him, and it always freaks me out, because it seems so very real to see him, so ridiculously possible…and then I wake up…and it’s all just ridiculously impossible. this might be about him, or someone else).
I saw you last night, in a dream I have not dreamt.
I remember the curve of your smile against the sky, and I listened to you laugh when I said “because I said so”.
The mediocrity you loathed, the one that’s required to survive isn’t anywhere close to the dreams we chase, and yet – is this, in fact, a dream?
Or are you here, wandering the minor recesses of my head and knocking on the red door three times?
Skip that one, nobody wants to go in there anyway.
I’m left questioning whether or not this is real. And if you were ever real at all.
All you are is a ghost in a machine I don’t even know anything about anymore. You’re a notice in the newspaper’s archives.
You live in another country I do not have a passport for.
And all the dancing faces from that time you dared me to run away and told me that my ‘pick ‘n mix’ approach will only make me sad one day
…those faces pop up like flames licking the walls of my sleeping mind, and I awaken, scared that it’s not all just a dream.
Scared but relieved. Does that make any sense at all?
Have I ever made sense?
And I well up, afraid that I did not say the things I meant to say, before you disappeared from my brain again. Did I show you everything I meant to? I’m sorry if I skipped the most important parts.
Before the sunlight flitters in and takes you away again.
Away to wherever you are. I don’t know where that is, anymore.