This happened Sunday night, though I’ve changed the actual words. Donna Vorreyer asks us (channeling Jane Hirshfeld) to write a prose poem about the aftermath of a dream. The semi-ex-fellow texted me at an ungodly hour after he woke from a dream in which he realized that I slept with this person we are now both friends with, years before the two of us met. And I’ve had dreams like that before too, but I’m rarely so taken with them that I call someone out on them; I think I’d feel even more awkward than they would. But in the first post-wake-up blush, I guess it might have seemed like a good idea at the time. Anyway, it was just a moment of discussion, and I think/hope we’ve gotten past it. I don’t dwell on the fling (it was over four years ago, sheesh), and I don’t see why he would either. Because let’s face it: we both have pasts full of momentary passions.
A Message from an Ex-Lover at Half Past Two in the Morning
Dreams are sieves, you realized, woven wires shaking from side to side until the chatter has filtered out, leaving what you didn’t know that you know. And you put it together, nothing psychic about it, just mathematics: it was the numbers that it took forever to see. You ask me, our common friend did you ever sleep with him, and what am I supposed to do, lie about it? I have taken a vow of honesty; I bind my tongue with salt and lemon juice against the speaking of lies. Yes but it was just once I was practically a child. What other apologies can I make. Dreams are also circuits that flick from closed to open and unstopper knowledge, of past indiscretions, or facts that you didn’t know had sharp edges. We can trade revelations, assurances, on a glowing screen in the middle of the night: it’s okay I don’t really care. But dreams can be films that remind us of how we were when we still clothed ourselves with ignorance. Only your breath and your hands. That’s the kind I want to have, the kind where, half-a-second after waking, time has been effaced like chalk from a chalkboard and you know nothing but the most atomic truths.
We are creating our dreams, so we should be able to stay in control, but it can be hard, dreams do take over at times. A dangerous path.
I want to wrap the last sentence around me. Articulate. That’s the word I want for you. You are able to articulate emotions with incredible truth and clarity. Quite a gift.
‘facts that you didn’t know had sharp edges’ — yep. And love the sieve and circuit metaphors.
Sasha: there are so many different ideas of truth and so many different ways to get to it that I don’t think it ever profits to stick to just one; but it certainly doesn’t to stick to them all, either.
Margo: I was pretty proud of “atomic truths”; it sounds better than the technical etymology, “indivisible”. Thanks very much!