The Dream That Was Not a Dream

Last night’s dream wasn’t even a dream.

It was a download. A dispatch.

I was told now things in my life were real. Not bad, not good. Just that I’d evolved past clinging to unsubstantial, unsustainable solutions like they were life rafts. Unavailable lovers; disordered habits; disposable things.

I was reminded that I still had a book I’d written. A child’s testimony I was ready to rewrite from the perspective of the loving parent—

The parent she never had.

The parent I never had.

The parent my parents never had.

I was shown transforming this book into essays, sifting through its materials with the concentrated care you’d show a child.

That I still had a purpose. That in fact I still had a child.

Me.

I am crying as I write this.

Getting older isn’t necessarily harder. It’s not necessarily sadder.

But you feel everything more, you hide from it less.

You do that, or you die.

One way or another, you die.

And that’s a lot to bear.

Stark. Solitary.

But not necessarily alone.