Lost in Memories
She stands alone in pitch blackness trying to gather her bearings and when she realizes her surroundings, she moves, creeping slowly, silently in a direction that is singing her name. She knows this dream, a false reality filled with memories forgotten and fantasies, inklings of hidden little dreams of things she never had but always wanted.
Blackness continues to envelope around her, and she feels suffocated, claustrophobic until her eyes bare witness to the tiniest sliver of light and she knows when she moves through that crevice what she will be witnessing. Part of her fears and part of her wants to run toward it. She keeps her movements slow and deliberate. She doesn’t want to miss anything, but she is also too aware of the pain she will be inflicting on an already frail psyche.
When she makes it to the light, she steps into it and its warmth makes her feel like she’s on fire. The sensation quickly fades when she moves further past the opening, the light that is leading dissipates and she is left in the darkness, alone, once again.
She moves in a straight line because she knows the path she has chosen, and her subconscious is aware that she is about to be attacked. She is very heedful to the fact that she is about to relive and revisit thoughts and dreams, realities and make-believe fantasies that she has created.
The memories don’t hit as hard as she believes, but maybe that is because they aren’t the memories she is there to see.
She moves past a door, the one that leads her to the one she loves, and though she hesitates, and looks back longingly at the wooden object that she knows will take her to a safe happy memory, she forces herself forward. She is careful to move slowly. She wants to witness some thoughts and ideas and chooses to ignore others because some things she wants to remember and others she still remembers far too vividly in another realm of reality.
She moves for what seems an eternity and she feels she is gaining no ground. The circles she walks have her growing weary. She drudges on anyway, her palms sweating, her heart firing rapidly against a cage of ribs.
Ahead of her lay a thick layer of ghost white fog, a barricade set before her so that she would question her motives before she allows herself to enter a realm that could destroy her. She moves through it without thinking. The mist is so cold it chills her skin. Tiny droplets of water fall from an unknown heaven and she is surrounded by the liquid. It grows heavier, stormier as she moves farther forward.
She sees the glass and only then does she halt. She hesitates her steps before she is moving again, and as she moves closer images start to take shape. The glass is dirty, almost cobwebbed, its shiny surfaces gleaming dingily. She sees the outlines of trees and grass through the film of dust, all lush and green, and she assumes the season is spring. Flowers are vining wildly in all directions on the glass, and when she finally makes it to her destination, she stops before she can touch the structure, fear climbing out of the far recesses of her brain.
There is no reason to fear, and she knows this. The person she longs to see is here, and she knows this person is nurturing. Even in a figment of dreams or long lost memories she knows her deepest longing. She forces herself to move forward, not regretting.
Her hair is dripping and waving with the over abundance of moisture, and it feels like a weight resting on her head, much too close to her brain. She moves a soaked strand of hair from her face, plastering it behind her ear, letting it mingle with the rest of her water saturated hair. Her being is soaked and she looks like a drenched cat. Her fitted black dress is clinging aggressively to her body securely, tightly, in a way that is showing off her toned stomach muscles, the hem riding in a wrinkling irritation above her knees. She doesn’t notice or feel discomfort all she sees in the glass partitioning and when she touches it everything changes. The glass disappears, but she cannot move forward because a barrier, invisible to the naked eye, has replaced it. The scene before her is clear with no abstract distraction of dirtiness to cloud out the images.
She already feels the tears, their stinging a reminder of her human nature, their heat burning against her frigid body temperature, and she isn’t sure why she is reacting to a memory that she knows she is responsible for creating. The scene is so real, so vivid, every color a perfect painting, and it breaks her.
She slides down the invisible partitioning, her body turning so her back lay against it, with eyes full of tears, and she feels empty, hollow, like she’s swimming in an ocean alone, sinking with every memory. She half twists her body so she can see through the invisible barrier, the gulping hiccups of tears resonating in the depths of her throat. She looks at the woman, and her baby.
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