After a Dream

Painting by: Andrew Newell Wyeth

My eyes grew weary from the heat filled room with eastward facing windows. The sun continues to turn my bed into a furnace as it shines through the glass during the hottest part of the day. As temperatures rise my eyes continue to gain more weight until they are too heavy to stay open. When my eyelids close out the sunshine all that is left is darkness.

The light kept out allows for a canvas of imagination. Dreams dwindling down the rope of the pulled curtain and left on the stage is the show. But, on this day I have discovered, even there you find me. My escape in my dreams, this hidden fantasy, a place where I can shut everyone out and welcome only those who are welcome, you find me there. You’ve walked into my room on this stage, entering the door as if it’s your own. I leap from the place I have fallen and land into the sea of your arms, until you melt away. You’ve left me on my own stage, in my own imagination, alone with you melted on the floor. Even here, in my own world, created with my own mind, my thoughts, my hopes, my dreams, you’ve conquered me. I’ve fallen again, not just in the reality created by all men, but here in my world, I’ve fallen again. I am a fool.

So I’ve awoke from this dream and found myself laying back down in this hot, hot, eastward facing room. And I will stay here, for if I step out the desert breeze will only fill toxic sand in my lungs. I am left with nothing but these dreams I no longer have control of. The welcomed, the unwelcome- entering in and out. I allow my eyes to grow heavy to avoid toxicity within the desert air, for the wine stained clouds that float above this house never pour. Leaving the sun to continue to shine in these eastward facing windows and leaving you, the unwelcome, to enter on that stage door.

Distracted by Sirens

My head is pressed down on the cold kitchen counter with my eyes closed. I hear the banging of pots and pans as my dad prepares dinner. “I hate boys” I told my father as he shuffles through the refrigerator. “Well, ya know, Kate, boys are stupid and I don’t blame you.” I sat there thinking my mind was made up, this is it, I will never date again. I hate the feeling of disappointment after so much anticipation. It’s like flat champagne when you’re expecting the POP!

My dad could sense my disappointment. When I picked up my head and noticed my father staring at me, “Kate, do you know the meaning of love… love is the feeling of responsibility for someone else’s happiness.” Until then I never really knew how to describe love. I have been out searching for this magical feeling but really had no idea what I was looking for. I’ve always had such wonderful examples of love in my life, but never REALLY understood what it meant. I look at my father and his love for my mother. I think of my grandparents and their kept promise of till death do them part. I also think of their journey to finding each other.

Love is like pirates and treasure. Love is gold. Love is hard to find. And the journey to discovering love is priceless. Even if I never do find the treasure the journey getting there has been filled with glorious tales of the high seas. Homer and the Odyssey. I will now no longer look at disappointing dates/relationships as flat champagne, but rather Odysseus’ trip home to Penelope. Each terrible date is just a swerve off the road distracted by sirens. One day, hopefully, maybe, I will be in a place much like the wonderful examples in my life; but if not, I have one hell of a story to tell.