I
suppose getting better from doing nothing for a while is still getting better.
I wouldn't call this healing, that's such an extravagant word, but I suppose
that shares the same properties with what's just been happening in my head.
I
saw you in a dream last night. It was a long and elaborate dream, the sort
where I'm in an auditorium or lecture theatre tucked away in one of the rows
near the top but somehow manning the spotlights at the same time. The dream was
populated with faces that didn't become faces until I wanted them to be but you
were definitely you from the start. As I remember you, that is: hair slightly
shorter, voice an octave lower. You were as clear as the acts on the stage
below, they buzzed and blurred past in their own excessive sweat. I was
watching but you were whispering in my ear.
I
didn't hear anything until you put your hand in my trousers. There were two
empty seats to either side of us but I wasn't so sure about the row behind. Of
course, I didn't check. You asked me if I was in the neighbourhood again and I
was tempted to ask you about that woman you were going out with last time we
talked, the one who made slate heart place mats. I imagine she probably made
more than that but it's what I took away from that last conversation we had, after
you took what you took away from me.
In
the dream I didn't dwell on it which, quite frankly, expresses the fact that it
was a dream. I just agreed in a rather tired, perhaps subdued voice. I didn't
even turn to you. About a year earlier I would have turned to you, I would have
kept you in sight at all times as you entered me and then maybe I entered you.
But I haven't really thought about you for months now.
You
still come with the midnight urges, as a last ditch attempt at getting a calm
sleep. I just don't get those urges as frequently anymore. It's been years since
I saw you and I just don't know what you might look like anymore, I don't know
if I would like it. You moved on a long time ago, you got those early bouts of
lust out of the way by other means. You seemed settled with that stone mason
girl and, as I'm sure you clearly remember, you told me to back off. So I did,
I backed away so much that I eventually found myself going in another
direction. It's still fairly uneventful but it's a direction and I have no hard
feelings. Anyway those things probably didn't count as hard feelings, they were
just ungratified youth really.
So
that's that. I'm still alone and lonely but I'm not longing for you. Even my
subconscious is shifting focus. It's an affirming feeling but, of course,
you'll never know.
I
suppose I should have ended the dream with some grand symbolic act like taking
a slate heart place mat - I saw some in a supermarket once, they might have
been her work - and doing something dramatic with it. I didn't break anything,
I didn't scrub anything clean. I just woke up and stopped feeling guilty.
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