Monday, December 22, 2014

A Clever Title That Won't Make Me Wince Later

I dreamed about you last night.  I'm not sure what a heartstring is, exactly, but it's been ten years and I still feel a tug in the center of my chest.  We were sitting at a round cafeteria table, in a room full of the usual suspects, I guess, although I didn't see any of them.  As we sat there, opposite each other, I felt that old familiar magnetic current, the one born of friendship and shared experience and never being able to have an actual conversation (unless it was an emergency or my boy's hair needed buzzing) with a touch of lust, deeply repressed.  Or more than a touch.  Anway.
You are not the only one I dream about, but you are the only one I dream about specifically.  There are That Place dreams, involving unexpected return, confrontation, and, more recently, plotting mass escape, but the dreams about you particularly are different, if only in that they are more personal.  I vaguely recall a conversation about your children, maybe an interaction with them.  I heard you and your wife lost a baby recently, a few days after her birth.  Before that, I heard that you were depressed, always on the couch, and that your wife was so stressed her hair was falling out.  My heart throbs with impotent rage and sadness.  The young man I knew was full of puppyish enthusiasm and energy.  Now you sound broken.
I think about how our lives could be so different if things had been ... different.  I know that "if only" is a waste of time, and I know that the things lost would be at least equal to, and possibly greater than, the things gained.  Still, I wonder.
I cannot wish you well.  Not because I wish you otherwise, but because "well" is not a word I can realistically associate with that place, nor do I believe that it's a possibility for anyone remaining there.  I wish you ... awakening.  Freedom.  Bravery, heroism, escape.  The chance to breathe again.  That's what I wish.

1 comment:

  1. Slam dunk. Nothing but net. Swish. Basketball euphemisms are spewing out of me as my brain stumbles after, "I wish you ... awakening. Freedom. Bravery, heroism, escape. The chance to breathe again. That's what I wish."
    Right to the core, right to the raw heart of it. Welcome back.

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