Dreams

I have vivid dreams. The kind that are like a M.Night Shamayalan flick. I always wake up thinking, I need to write this stuff down. Seriously.

Last night was different: I had one I didn’t want to write down. I don’t even want to remember it.

But I will. Forever.

I am standing in an abandoned homesite. It’s my home, but not habitable. The buildings are skeletal, the corrals a tangle of wire and memory. I can’t remember why I’m here. I can’t remember where ‘here’ is.

I am wearing a white nightgown with a square neck and small buttons and a narrow ruffle at the hem that flutters around my ankles. I am barefoot. The ground beneath my toes is jaundiced clay, its surface cracked and peeling with feathery tufts of sage and tumbleweeds sprouting from the cracks.  The sky seems a long way off.

Someone else is present but I don’t know who it is. They have a question. I can’t speak so I walk to a desk covered in cobwebs and dust. I pick up a pencil. I can’t remember what I was going to say. I turn. My nightgown flutters in the breeze. I take one step. Then another.

The sky is darker now.

The earth moves and my stomach feels strange, like it does when I’m standing outside an elevator shaft. I take another step. I need to run, but I don’t know which way to go. I turn in circles. The ground buckles beneath my feet. I take flight. A grave opens up beneath me and I fall headlong, my body twisting, the nightgown wrapping itself into a shroud. I land on my back and dirt floods over me. Soil. Good soil. Rich soil. Soft and pungent and moist. It will grow many things. It is life-giving and life-taking at the same time.

I reach for the sky, but too late. The hole closes in over me. Soil packs tight around my body. My arms are frozen in that position, as I reach upward. I close my eyes. I am buried alive. I don’t scream or fight. It won’t matter. I will die here. I’m uncertain, but I’m not scared. I think: I wasn’t ready to die.

I wasn’t ready.