nightmares
Two nightmares in one night. These days logic drowns. Especially in the dark. I am afraid of being alone. What saves me often: love. I grab onto his hand.
But he’s sleeping, and when I try to wake him he doesn’t understand. A father to his daughter when she comes into our room: it was just a dream go back to bed. He pushes logic but it has spikes sometimes. She cries and sleeps beside her brother instead.
I feel that fear: when I die I will be alone. Love can’t save me from that, and love can’t save me now. I will hold all children who come to my bedside afraid. For now I am a furry animal with a hurricane for a brain and a jellyfish heart.
I turn into my pillow and the night ticks on. In the first dream no one was there and I was lost and it started to snow. In the second dream a man was burning a woman and I was clubbing him in the face for hours.
I need to believe that if I wake, he wakes, and if I stutter out fear he understands and his hands comb my hair, his arms hold me unbearably tight. Then my heart would return to my chest.
What do people do without love. Virginia Woolf says that there are parts of us that no one, not even the most beloved, could ever find.
