The memory, floating above us in the atmosphere, thickens with the evaporation of the groundswell we made.
Darker and darker and darker it grows, until it grows so wretchedly, wondrously beautiful that the sound reaches us from another dimension.
We awaken and climb out of bed, climb out of the hole we have dug for ourselves in the hollow, climb out of our skin and out of the trees that bind us. And we look up. And we watch. (Are we still dreaming?)
Do you know what this means? I turn to ask you.
You are not there. I had forgotten this about you.
The memory reaches down and rends itself upon the grassy pasture, and I am caught up in the storm once more. And I wonder how I can ever learn to control this; aren’t I the creative mind that found this place, ground this place into submission? How did it ever get so out of hand? How did the creation turn into something its creator could not have foreseen? Where did I go wrong?
I’m lost in it now—my mind slips into the dark memory, and it’s like there’s a string around my stomach, slinging me about. My spine snaps and I spill in water and blood everywhere:
Lost, lost, lost. Entropic principle. Lagrange, the mathematician. 13.7 Billion Julian years. Medication. Meditation. Illness prevails. Have you ever been paralyzed with fear? She holds the bottle of pills, shaking–I will never, ever forget. Pale Blue Dot, suspended in a ray like the dust in my grandmother’s house at 1:30PM summer of ‘95; the air was thick that day. Sleeping pills hidden in the M&Ms bag–Oh my God, I can remember. Oh, Tetragrammaton, Where Are You Now? 10^19 particulate solution is normal. Fuck you; leave me be, leave me be (so ignorant). Centrifugal forces and torsion points rip everything apart–C’est Physics. I am scaring you, but I am scaring me more. Truth. “Goddamn it?” No, God damn us all. Cacophonous crescendo. Dissipate into Orion Nebula, M42-22LY across. Rx of CO2 with K2SO4 (yields) –> 2CO2 + K2SO4. I crumple under this weight meant for us both, so that you might walk upright–may we never know the sacrifices we made in spite of each other.
What would be people think if they saw the contents of my mind strewn about like this? I wonder if I am okay. I wonder if I need help. Do I? Do you?
But you are not there. I keep forgetting this about you.
I lie awake in my cold bed and feel you all fly away from me,
to thought-worlds and color-places that exist in the mist of dreamers’ minds.
Even the sky leaves me here, and falls away to black expanse.
(I wonder, as I shiver with the thought, if it scares anyone else
to realize that daylight is the shroud and darkness the reveal?)
I wish I could follow you all, down to your misty, secret worlds.
I would kiss you, take you into my arms, tell you lovely things,
if you would find me here, and lay your warm body next to mine
for a soft, sweet interruption from my introspective reverie.
