Dreams

They come from a swirling mixture of the day's events, thoughts that are being ruminated over and those things that ever secretive portion of the mind has filed away. They come in ultra color vision or those faded, washed out tints I see in photos that have spent too much time exposed to the sun.

He is a transient visitor during my waking hours. As time has passed he has slowly receded. Certain sights and smells trigger memories, but he does not consume me now the way he did most of my life. The sun I revolved around, singed by the heat and radiation. Him, patiently waiting when I could take no more. Again and again I was torn by the gravitational pull, struggling against myself, but always going back.

He has not taken a breath in years. Not a single knowing smile or a look that peeled me away to the core. He is dispersed, having washed up on the stream banks and made his way into a river that flows north.

In the daylight I go about my life. I cannot change what has happened. I cannot bring him back. The years have given me distance from the breathless grief, the things that should have been said, the things I can never take back. It took so long, but time is a salve I gratefully accept. He is not in the forefront of my brain. I tightly close the door when he wells up. I rarely speak his name.

Yet he has slipped quietly into the nightly subconscious pool.

I rejoice in the nights when my mind is a blank slate, or I simply cannot remember what tale my brain was developing. He is there in the dream scape, sometimes nightly, sometimes not for months. Sometimes the main character in the nightly yarn my brain spins, sometimes standing silently in the background. But when I wake it's always the same, even after all these years. For a brief second there is hope when I open my eyes and I have to remind myself he's dead. Thousands of times going through this. I used to sob early on, but now I bitterly get up and push him into a dark, cramped corner of my mind so I can get on with the day. Wanting to dig out with a garden trowl last vestiges of what my mind cannot let go of.

I used to bargain early on. Bargain away my arm, bargaining away anything and everything I had of consequence. But he never came back. And now I would give anything not to dream.

A Book MeMe

I pirated this from Missy. Paste the list into your blog, put READ next to the ones you have, WANT TO next to the ones you are longing to read and SO-SO next to those that you read, but could take or leave.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) READ
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) READ
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee) READ repeatedly...a favorite
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell) READ
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien) WANT TO
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien) WANT TO
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien) WANT TO
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) SO-SO
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling) READ repeatedly
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown) WANT TO
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling) READ repeatedly
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling) READ
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King) READ
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling) READ
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) READ
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien) READ, a favorite as a kid
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) READ
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) READ repeatedly as a kid
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel) WANT TO
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) WANT TO
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) READ
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis) READ repeatedly as a kid
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck) READ
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom) SO-SO
31. Dune (Frank Herbert) READ repeatedly
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell) READ
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley) SO-SO
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel) READ repeatedly, along with the whole series
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible SO-SO
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) READ - one of the most depressing books ever
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) SO-SO
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens) SO-SO
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) SO-SO
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling) READ
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) READ
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) SO-SO
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy) READ
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice) READ -loved her vampire series
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) READ
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) READ
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett) READ
76. Tigana (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith) READ
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving) READ repeatedly
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White) READ repeatedly as a kid
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck) READ
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier) READ
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen) READ
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams) READ repeatedly
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding) READ
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd) WANT TO
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton) READ
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield) SO-SO
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)