The Moving Box

In the last 37 minutes of sleep, when my brain fixings halt, too nudged, bladder full of piss and head full of troubles; alarms and men backing their trucks into nowhere and the silence before shoppers make claim; steak dinner on the waterfront, bed I hate to get out of, there was you.

I was flying in this dream, but that’s not right. Soaring down escalators in a far off city of tin and business bullshit. Mine, but elsewhere. Couldn’t get downstairs and workday was long done. I managed to glide down, impossible lengths and stairways, thinking I should die if I don’t land right, but I always did. No one else had this but me. Thing is, no one really looked over to notice the girl bearing past them, the wake in my breeze offering up some scent of “away from here”; the impetus to shout “run!”. They just kept chatting verbiage from their old bones in young bodies, their smoke breaks and their puddles of shitty brown complacency. That This is just fine, and That is not something to think about. The easy life.

For our bodies to function as they do with this clearly schizophrenic can can bonanza of a mind, percentages go dying or stand dormant under the covers, while we inject it again and again with routine, and facts and ego. That ridiculous thought that you are…..actually in control of the life. Victor Frankel, not in my dream but always sitting just behind my judging glares in bars to people left lonely, tells me everyday that asking what life owes to us means nothing, but what are you giving It, elevator enthusiast? I’m flying overhead and landing just fine, even when the fear takes hold. Stop pressing the buttons and riding to the top floor just to feel the selfish thrill that you may fall off, stop sliding back and forth to the usual place of employ, when you don’t even work there. Coffee machines and lunch hours, paper clips and water coolers….the same dull blade but without the thrill of drugs, the mystery of the sailing ship or the multi faceted sweet face of the wandering (no desert required).

After all this, there was a house. There is always a house, the soul one single diamond in the castle with many rooms to see. I woke up, but I wasn’t awake. In a bed, in a cottage, not here but in the country. Which country? THE country. I felt you with your arms wrapped around me, half-asleep as you are now, trying to budge and wake up. I spoke, but you didn’t answer. Still, I was afraid it wasn’t really you. But I looked down in a lucid spell of a focused dream-eye, and saw your arms. The arms I have memorized. The scars, the hairs, the skin, the hands. Wrapped around me so tight. There was some comfort in that. A bandage on the right hand and wrist told me for true. Still more movement, still no talking, but still you wouldn’t wake up. But you seemed to hold me to you just the same. I looked up at the Lollygagging lady who passed in the doorway – looking at me and smiling and making to leave us alone as she always did.

I caressed your hands as it was the only way to speak your language. I wondered if you’d figured out that the elevator trip takes you nowhere, and is only popular as it’s what everyone else feels they have to do. I leaned back into you, so I could rest in my final moments before the alarm would go off, as my mental fact checker would always wake me in time. In that comforter of your body and mine, I silently hoped for your fears to leave you. That you’d know you could rocket to the stars, down through the dirty underworlds and up through the skies and treetops, taking every fragrant noise with you, if you just knew that you Could.