TheBanyanTree: A Waking Dream

[Monique Colver]

It was a waking dream, coming to me while at work, at my computer, doing
something having to do with numbers, nothing to do with dreams. In this
waking dream I saw someone, me perhaps, sitting on my couch, legs up, knees
up. She, or I, lays her head back, and falls asleep quietly.

Except she doesn't wake up, because she didn't just fall asleep, she fell
dead, silently and without warning, a death that resembles sleep but only
in the very beginning.

After the very beginning, it's nothing but death and decay. I see her, or
me, being carried out of the house by a man, her body inert. There's sun in
front of them, as if he's walking into the light.

This waking dream startles me, it came out of nowhere so unexpectedly. The
house is quiet, the dogs asleep, the husband in Seattle, and it's just me,
working. And I admit, I wanted to cry. Did, in fact, cry, overcome with a
sadness that came out of nowhere.
I talk myself out of it, I say, "that couldn't have been me, because the
girl had long hair, and I do not." She's younger than I am too. I know
nothing about her, and so l know it's not me, because I know far  too much
about myself not to recognize myself when I show up in a dream.

I don't have waking dreams, as a rule. I save dreams for when I'm asleep,
when my subconscious has the run of the premises. I don't have time during
the day, for I'm attempting to work myself into an early grave, and though
my mind wanders frequently it does not engage in visions.

The dead girl was such a vivid image that she won't leave my mind, she
frustrates me because I know so little about her, where she came from, or
why she fell dead on my couch.

I want to know, as long as she isn't me. If she is me, I'd rather not know,
y'know? But if she isn't, I wasn't to know her story, and why she came here
to die.

I thought then of all the things I need to do before I die, like give all
my clients their files, their secret passwords, their schedules of what's
due when. If I fall asleep and don't wake up, there will be unhappy people.
They'll want their files, their documents, their secret passwords. And
they'll be mad at me.

I don't like it when people are mad at me, though why should I care? But I
do, don't I? There's no getting around it, I'm not nearly as tough as I'd
like.

I'm not sure if this is about me or about the dead girl. Maybe we're one
and the same, but I think not. It's the hair, of course, and her age, and
she was pretty. But I know nothing else about her, and I have only this
fleeting tableau that I have to go on. I want to fill in the blanks, find
out what happened to her before she fell dead. It was so peaceful, and
afterwards, when she was carried out of the house, there was so much light.

monique
Sent from my Android and my Couch