I lay my head on my pillow to catch my breath. Thirty minutes are all I need to find my focus and fight the forces facing me down. Am I right? I am right. The nap proves to be enough.
Am I wrong? I am wrong. Thirty minutes are all my brain needs to fracture my fugue and fiddle the futures, ******* me up. The nap proves to be rough. I lay my head on your pillow to catch your breath.
And it opens up a billion doorways I closed, a billion I chose (beside myself, so this fog could escape) to forget to facilitate as your friend far from home. When they open, it's osmosis; my cell goes insides-out. I open up a single doorway I chose, a doorway I close (behind myself, so the dog won't escape) to forget not to indicate to your friends this is home.
What have I undone? Therapy, denial, or life as we know it? Or was I shouting a suggestion from my sub-surface senses? I worked so hard to fix this, but there's a pinhole in my boat. I'll sink frame by frame in a matter of captured time. What have I done?
Back to your breath. Warm. Vibrant. Familiar and funded with the fearless feats of the night. It's too clear for me to lie about. It's too present for me to hide from. I am suddenly aware of the infinite undoings I could do in a second, and I suppose it's best not to know these things.
You'd have told me to drink about it (we can think about it later), but in my split-second dream it's later and we're thinking. We're making propositions. We can't not see it. We been digging the notion for years (we keep our feelings buried deep) and now we've hit a nerve. We've lost it and we love it. We've found it, and we fear.
This is the aftermath of our daily wars. We've pulled out and grown tired, and now we're ready to sleep. Together? It's more than I can make out and less than I can deny. I can't help but hear the cracks ripple through the perfect present I stumbled upon.
The first thing I want to do is call you, but what could I possibly say to make this make sense? We're still in separate military states. We're building our arsenals, and in ten years time we'll call respective peace and come back home. But it's a fraction of a fantasy from a time I tried not to trespass upon again, right? Our now is too perfect to remember that I thought of this then, right?
But here it is again.
And it seems too future-familiar to undo.
If I mention it, does it destroy itself? If I don't, will it never become? Do I want this or not? Now is too precious to neither fight nor shape nor occupy. Maybe this is just a function of knowing you so well and not enough. Maybe this is natural. Maybe I'm just ******* crazy and this is another insanity you'll have to put up with.
The second thing I want to do is call you and apologize for everything I haven't even done yet. I want to be sorry for moving to the city and learning its secrets, sorry for our nights out and increasingly improved interactions, sorry for the night when I let this slip. Will I fall? Will we fall? Can we catch each other before we hit the ground running?
It's a tiny little kernel, fresh back from the void, but it remains.
As vague a proclamation as I can muster is all I'd like to offer. A backwards sideways whisper that I had a strange dream and it changed everything by telling me that nothing had changed. So maybe inside that candle still glows, and the face I've carved melts before it burns out. Can that be okay? I shouldn't be afraid of scaring you; you've always loved this holiday. Let's keep pretending we're monsters.
And here I am again,
Just like I always was.
Just (as if) I always was.
One little dream won't melt my mind or mend my memories,
And one little wonder won't belt my bind or bend my boundaries.
We are us now, and then is an electron that we'll never catch.
No need to bond our present to our future,
Let's drop the valence and keep our bodies warm.
[Oct. 31, 2011]