Dead Letter Department #99 (dream edition)

In the dream, the country we’re traveling in is violent enough that I am practicing defensive driving to evade the various kidnappers & highway robbers following us, taking the Jeep up and over the thickly forested hills & back down again to the narrow two-lane highway. In spite of the dangers of the road, we (me & two blurry but beloved figures that only occasionally resolve into individuality) are going to a poetry reading.

The performance is held in the bottom half of an old-fashioned general store, and is initially sparsely attended. The first readers are nervous, unable to project, but as the evening goes on, more and more people arrive, and the readings get stronger. I have arrived without a plan of what to read myself, and end up finding a Dead Letter I think moderately suitable, even though it is not poetry. The dream does not tell me which one, but it is well-received, and I am grateful to not embarrass myself. Walking off stage, the room is now crammed full.

I find old friends sitting along the wall, and they demand to know why I hadn’t told them I was going to be in their town. We are so happy to see each other. In waking life, I have not seen them in twenty years, but in my heart I still call them my friends.

I tell them that my dad just died, and it has rendered me temporarily unable to make plans, to call ahead, to do anything but drive the wild roads outside &, apparently, arrive at this poetry reading.

But we are making too much noise, & someone is just about to step up to the patch of wooden floor that is the stage, so I wriggle through the crowd to take the last chair.

And then you sit down—one of my early loves—on the floor by my side and put your head on my knee, as though we had just seen each other the day before, and I put my hand in your hair, which feels exactly the way it used to, even though in the stirring of my just-about-to-wake mind I know you would be just as much salt & pepper as I am these days.

I don’t have to explain: you have already heard, and won’t make me say again that my father is dead. I am so relieved that for a moment I struggle against the rush of awakening to my real bed, to another day, just wanting to stay there where I don’t have to talk about it.

I'm not back yet, but I’m working on it.