Walkin’ After Midnight

I first had this idea of dreamwalking time before last when we fell back in love. Remember, it was during the time that you were feeling the full force of the eradication of your autonomy, while you were starving for intimacy. I suggested that we try to dream together, although things truly fell apart before we could try.

Of course, that was then. When was it not then? It’s never been now before, but now that it is, the time is ripe. Rather than force an interaction, I go out walking in my dreams, down the soul roads where I first learned how you live inside me. The dark light guides the feet of my spirit off the road to a slumbering willow crying in her sleep, and I know that it is the place of my grief.

I pause, hesitate, waver in my certainty that we will find each other, if you have the courage to meet me here. You never could have when it was then. It’s not a failure, just a fact.

It would be unfair of me to make assumptions about now based on then, so I enter this living, growing monument of my grief, parting the cascade of green curtains, coming all the way inside to sit down with my grief, rest my tired self against her trunk. You can’t climb a willow tree if you’re not a cat, not that you’d want to. The beauty is within, a different light shines when leaves filter it, softening away the sharp shards of glare so that it may rest gently in memories.

We weep together, my tree and I, leaves and water flowing from our faces until I’ve spent my tears and she allows a breeze to flutter through us, lifting my spirit, urging me to forsake the road for the river. Trees are wise, so I obey.

Dreams so real flow above the rapids, breaking into fragments to float serenely through the stagnation of the depths, and I hear the broken hearts and broken voices from one William (Shakespeare) to another (Faulkner) and the cream that rose to the top between their dreams.

Eliot should have followed rivers instead of deserts; it’s the water of the beach that feeds; the sand of the desert will never know the tide, has no idea what true rhythm is, just sun and wind with no bassline, no wet crescendo making shape.

Perhaps I’m not looking for you after all. Maybe I already found you, the day I gave you my eyes. Perhaps I carry you inside me always, like my blood. You can find me inside them, open me from within an entire universe of crystal blue.

I can become the sky for you. Unfetter me with your feathers and whisper your promise to the knees of the cypress in the river. I’ll make an island of them for you, a safe haven during storms, a cool place to rest when your wings get tired and your beak craves water. Don’t be afraid to snatch up a snake who may be furtively sidling up through bark and needles with an idea of sinking fangs into your foot. Trust the turtle resting on the log, never the dragonfly’s gossamer wings.

Now that we’re here, you can watch me swim from there in your tree, even when I dive down beneath the surface, using the water to keep the air off my skin. It’s no different from your wheeling in the sky, each of us flying through our own element.

Have no fear, even when we wake from this chamber in the sea, I will never ask you to be a river for me. The human voices may wake us, but we shall never drown.

I live for the times after midnight when walking leads to places where we both can fly.