THE DREAMING WORLD

Early morning, I dream of stories, of long ago, of worlds that share body with this world. I dream of boundaries, of exile, the faraway, the unknowable.

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Pixabay

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It is the best time for dreaming. The only sound in the world is inside me. Even though I am lying on the floor, inside me my body moves; bones settle and creak, blood thrum in arteries, lungs rustle and heart ticks. My body is alive in the night. It labours on.

Inside me, the dream is flesh & bone. It grows and trellises the body of my world. My world is made by my thoughts, by my hopes, by my trauma.

In a dreaming world, anything is possible. I am strong. I am weak. I am nothing at all. I can't breathe or I am air, wind, storm. I run. I drown. I find living conches, speaking sea urchins, the lapping whisper of a restless unnamed sea.

The sea is also my blood. It is also my bloodletting. Sometimes, it is just darkness darker than night, than pain, than terror. It is all of everything.

The dreaming world scares me sometimes. Like a creator who finds their creations to be wild cunning lives, secretive and changeable.

I am alone. The sweetest quality of the dreaming world; solitude. Everything is me. I am the only thing that exists outside that time. I exist simultaneously here and in the dreaming world. I don't really leave either worlds. I only become faint, hazy like a half remembered dream.

I forget myself. Which is to say, sometimes I am lost, a wandering, a cracked vessel gathering itself together gently from among the billow, the tow, the susurrus of dust.

I am trying to be complete, stitched and filled to the brim. Mostly, I dream.